why it
was that you saw new lights on things, and found food for mirth and
matter for reflection where neither had suggested itself before.

In those days he was not only original himself, but he had to a great
degree that rare faculty of bringing to the surface in others the very
smallest spark of originality, and of remembering it and appreciating
it in a way that was stimulating and helpful to those who had the
pleasure of knowing him. When the little seaside town was empty of
visitors, and it was not time to pay Edinburgh visits for the season, in
February and March, one kindness of his was very greatly prized by some
of us who beguiled the tedium of the winter months by writing for and
conducting an amateur magazine, called _Ours_. For this, in 1872 and
1873, Mr Stevenson gave us a short contribution, _The Nun of Aberhuern_,
a trifle in his own graceful style, which, as he was even then beginning
to be known in the world of letters, we valued much. Moreover, he took a
friendly interest in the sheets of blue MS. paper so closely written
over with our somewhat juvenile productions, and made here a criticism,
there a prediction, which has not been without its effect on the future
work of some of us.

Mr Stevenson was always kind and always sympathetic; he laughed at your
follies of course, but he did it so pleasantly that the laughter seemed
almost a compliment, and the kindness was more memorable than the mirth.
In one among his juniors at least, imbued like himself with a love of
old-time romance and of ancient story, he inspired a passion of
gratitude that abides to this day. Mr Stevenson not only never laughed,
as the other boys and girls did, nor treated the memory of delightful
childish plays with contempt, as was the fashion of the generation just
grown up, he never even smiled over the unfeminine tastes of a child who
went pirate-hunting in an upturned table with a towel for a sail and
dried orange skins for provender--or whose dolls were not treated as
those dainty girlish playthings ought to be, as pretty babies and gay
society dames, but figured as the tattered and battered followers of
Prince Charlie--himself a hero very much the worse for the wear in a
plaid and a kilt!--after Culloden. Or, in gayer moods, the same dolls
attended his receptions at Holyrood in garish garments, or masqueraded
as Mary Queen of Scots and her four Maries in that 'turret chamber high
of ancient Holyrood' where 'she summoned R