t something done by a given time, usually replied that 'time was
made for slaves.' Stevenson had the same feeling. He says: 'Hurry is
the resource of the faithless. When a man can trust his own heart and
those of his friends to-morrow is as good as to-day. And if he die in
the mean while, why, then, there he dies, and the question is solved.'

You think this a poor philosophy? But there must be all kinds of
philosophy; the people in the world are not run into one mould like so
much candle-grease. And because of this, his doctrine of Inaction and
Postponement, stern men and practical women have frowned upon
Stevenson. In their opinion instead of being up and doing he
consecrated too many hours to the idleness of literature. They feel
towards him as Hawthorne fancied his ancestor the great witch judge
would have felt towards _him_. Hawthorne imagines that ghostly and
terrible ancestor looking down upon him and exclaiming with infinite
scorn, 'A writer of storybooks. What kind of employment is that for an
immortal soul?'

To many people nothing is more hateful than this willingness to hold
aloof and let things drift. That any human being should acquiesce with
the present order of the world appears monstrous to these earnest
souls. An Indian critic once called Stevenson 'a faddling Hedonist.'
Stevenson quotes the phrase with obvious amusement and without
attempting to gainsay its accuracy.

But if he allowed the world to take its course he expected the same
privilege. He wished neither to interfere nor to be interfered with.
And he was a most cheerful nonconformist withal. He says: 'To know
what you prefer instead of humbly saying amen to what the world tells
you you ought to prefer is to have kept your soul alive.' Independence
and optimism are vital parts of his unformulated creed. He hated
cynicism and sourness. He believed in praise of one's own good estate.
He thought it was an inspiriting thing to hear a man boast, 'so long
as he boasts of what he really has.' If people but knew this they
would boast 'more freely and with a better grace.'

Stevenson was humorously alive to the old-fashioned quality of his
doctrine of happiness and content. He says in the preface to an
_Inland Voyage_ that although the book 'runs to considerably over a
hundred pages, it contains not a single reference to the imbecility of
God's universe, nor so much as a single hint that I could have made a
better one myself--I really do not know w