Page:The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Vailima Edition, Volume 8, 1922.djvu/20

PREFATORY NOTE, and at the same time was temporarily blind from an attack of ophthalmia. Not only was all light excluded from the room where he lay, but on account of the hemorrhage his right arm was closely bound to his side. Most men would have succumbed to the force of circumstances, but he, undismayed, determined to circumvent the fate he would not accept. Across his bed a board was laid on which large sheets of paper were pinned; on these, or on a slate fastened to the board, he laboriously wrote out in the darkness, with his left hand, many more of the songs of his childhood. In 1885 these were collected in a volume first called Penny Whistles, but afterwards changed to A Child's Garden of Verses, and published under that name with the addition of six envoys.

F. V. G. S.

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