him stop, and I
would say, "Why not come to Buckingham Street with me? You have not seen
J. for a long while." He would vow he couldn't, he must get back to Kew
to do his article. I would insist a little, he would waver a little, and
at last he would agree to a minute's talk with J., excusing himself to
himself by protesting that Buckingham Street was on his way to the
Underground, as it was if he chose to go out of his way to make it so.
Before he knew it, the minute had stretched out to our dinner hour when
he was persuaded that he would save time by dining with us, as he must
dine somewhere; if he went right afterwards, he could still be back at
Kew in plenty of time to finish his article for the last post.

Of course he never did go right afterwards--what talker ever did go
right anywhere immediately after dinner when the real talk is only
beginning? Presently people would filter in and now, well adrift on the
flood of his own eloquence, nothing could interrupt him and he was the
last to leave us, the later it grew the more easily induced to stay
because he knew that the last train and the last post and all the last
things of the day had gone and that he must now wait for the first
things of the morning.

If I could talk like Bob Stevenson I would not be interrupted either.
Greater excitement could not be had out of the most exciting story of
adventure, and I do not believe he knew until he got to the end any
more where his talk was going to lead him than the reader knows how the
story is going to turn out until the last chapter is reached. Louis
Stevenson described certain qualities of his talk, but made no effort to
give the talk itself, and in Bob's case, as in Henley's, it was the talk
itself that counted. There was no acting in it as in Henley's or in
Whistler's--no burying of his head in his hands and violent gestures--no
well-placed laugh and familiar phrase. The talk came in a steady stream,
laughter occasionally in the voice, but no break, no movement, no
dramatic action--the sanest doctrine set forth with almost insane
ingenuity, for he was always the "wild dog outside the kennel" who
wouldn't imitate and hence kept free, as Louis Stevenson told him;
extraordinary things treated quite as a matter of course; brilliant
flashes of imbecility passed for cool well-balanced argument; until
often I would suddenly gasp, wondering into what impossible world I had
strayed after him. And he would tell the most extra