to find an ideal wife also.
Two such natures as theirs were inevitably attracted to each other, and
it is not surprising that their friendship deepened into love, or that
in later years he says of her:

'Teacher, tender comrade, wife,
A fellow-farer true through life,
Heart-whole and soul-free,
The august Father
Gave to me.'

At San Francisco, on the 19th of May 1880, Robert Louis Stevenson and
Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne were married, and there began for them that
perfect life together which anxiety and illness could not cloud, and
which found its earthly termination when in that awful and sudden moment
in December 1894 Mr Stevenson entered into 'the Rest Eternal.'

Belle Osbourne became Mrs Strong, and by-and-bye she and her little boy
Austin joined the Stevensons in their home life. 'Sam,' as Mr Lloyd
Osbourne was called in those days, accompanied them to England when they
made their home at Bournemouth. He was a bright, eager boy when he used
to appear in Edinburgh, and one who was very welcome to the elder
Stevensons at Heriot Row. By-and-bye he went to the Edinburgh University
and there he was full of life and interest, keen on pleasures, keen on
friendships, interested in classes, and even then there was something
of the same earnestness, the same humour and brightness in him that
characterised his stepfather and which made him, by-and-bye, with no
small measure of the same gifts, his collaborator and friend. A
friendship that was begun in very early days when the two told each
other stories and issued romances from a toy printing-press, and when
the junior received that delightful dedication of _Treasure Island_ in
which he is described as 'a young American gentleman' to whose taste the
tale appeals.

Shortly after their marriage Mr and Mrs R. L. Stevenson had had the
quaint experience of housekeeping so charmingly described in _Silvarado
Squatters_, but their first real home was at Skerryvore, and Bournemouth
was the headquarters of the household until the necessities of Mr
Stevenson's health again made them wanderers; and that move in 1887
finally ended in the purchase of Vailima, and the pitching of their camp
in far Samoa.

The curtest mention of their Bournemouth life would be incomplete
without some notice of the many friends who found it so easy to reach
from London and so pleasant to visit, and who, themselves well known in
the literary world, so greatly appreciat