.. This Note was added in 1887, when the essay
appeared in _Memories and Portraits_. "Icon" means image (cf.
_iconoclast_); the word has lately become familiar through the
religious use of icons by the Russians in the war with Japan. Randolph
Caldecott (1846-1886) was a well-known artist and prominent
contributor of sketches to illustrated magazines.]

[Note 23: "_Stammering Professors_." A "professor" here means simply a
professing Christian. Stevenson alludes to the fact that dogs howl
fearfully if some one in the house is dying.]

[Note 24: "_Carneying_." This means coaxing, wheedling.]

[Note 25: _Louis Quatorze_. Louis XIV of France, who died in 1715,
after a reign of 72 years, the longest reign of any monarch in
history. His absolutism and complete disregard of the people
unconsciously prepared the way for the French Revolution in 1789.]

VII

A COLLEGE MAGAZINE

I

All through my boyhood and youth, I was known and pointed out for the
pattern of an idler;[1] and yet I was always busy on my own private
end, which was to learn to write. I kept always two books in my
pocket, one to read, one to write in. As I walked, my mind was busy
fitting what I saw with appropriate words; when I sat by the roadside,
I would either read, or a pencil and a penny version-book would be in
my hand, to note down the features of the scene or commemorate some
halting stanzas. Thus I lived with words. And what I thus wrote was
for no ulterior use, it was written consciously for practice. It was
not so much that I wished to be an author (though I wished that too)
as that I had vowed that I would learn to write. That was a
proficiency that tempted me; and I practised to acquire it, as men
learn to whittle, in a wager with myself. Description was the
principal field of my exercise; for to any one with senses there is
always something worth describing, and town and country are but one
continuous subject. But I worked in other ways also; often accompanied
my walks with dramatic dialogues, in which I played many parts; and
often exercised myself in writing down conversations from memory.

This was all excellent, no doubt; so were the diaries I sometimes
tried to keep, but always and very speedily discarded, finding them a
school of posturing[2] and melancholy self-deception. And yet this was
not the most efficient part of my training. Good though it was, it
only taught me (so far as I have learned them at all) the lower and
less in