ation. At Braemar he made a beginning of the nursery verses
which afterwards grew into the volume called _The Child's Garden_, and
conceived and half executed the fortunate project of _Treasure Island_,
the book which was destined first to make him famous. But one of the
most inclement of Scottish summers had before long undone all the good
gained in the previous winter at Davos, and in the autumn of the year
1881 he repaired thither again.

This time his quarters were in a small chalet belonging to the
proprietors of the Buol Hotel, the Chalet am Stein, or Chalet Buol, in
the near neighbourhood of the Symonds's house. The beginning of his
second stay was darkened by the serious illness of his wife;
nevertheless the winter was one of much greater literary activity than
the last. A Life of Hazlitt was projected, and studies were made for it,
but for various reasons the project was never carried out. _Treasure
Island_ was finished; the greater part of the _Silverado Squatters_
written; so were the essays _Talk and Talkers_, _A Gossip on Romance_,
and several other of his best papers for magazines. By way of whim and
pastime he occupied himself, to his own and his stepson's delight, with
a little set of woodcuts and verses printed by the latter at his toy
press--"The Davos Press," as they called it--as well as with mimic
campaigns carried on between the man and boy with armies of lead
soldiers in the spacious loft which filled the upper floor of the
chalet. For the first and almost the only time in his life there awoke
in him during these winters in Davos the spirit of lampoon; and he
poured forth sets of verses, not without touches of a Swiftean fire,
against commercial frauds in general, and those of certain local
tradesmen in particular, as well as others in memory of a defunct
publican of Edinburgh who had been one of his butts in youth
(_Casparidea_ and _Brashiana_, both unpublished: see pp. 14, 15, 38 in
vol. 24 of the present edition). Finally, much revived in health by the
beneficent air of the Alpine valley, he left it again in mid-spring of
1882, to return once more to Scotland, and to be once more thrown back
to, or below, the point whence he had started. After a short excursion
from Edinburgh into the Appin country, where he made inquiries on the
spot into the traditions concerning the murder of Campbell of Glenure,
his three resting-places in Scotland during this summer were Stobo Manse
near Peebles, Lochearnh