izzio with his lute and bade
the minstrel play.'

Mr Stevenson listened gravely to all these things. He professed a real
interest in them. He even remembered the names of the puppets and the
parts they had played, and so gained for himself an enduring niche in
the heart that had bitterly resented the mockery of the others. It is
quite possible that a nature so gentle and so appreciative as his really
_felt_ the sympathy. The juniors are rarely mistaken as to the
genuineness of the feelings of their elders, and his interest certainly
rang true to the youthful mind. He had been himself a delicate child, so
he was capable of understanding how many weary and solitary hours the
romantic plays had filled pleasantly.

It is not a memory of much moment, perhaps, but it shows that even at an
age when most young men are too keenly concerned with themselves and
their own affairs to take much trouble for those who are a few years
their juniors, Mr Stevenson had thought and sympathy to spare for the
small joys and sorrows, the interests, and the 'make-believes' that had
amused a lonely child, and which, after all, in one form or another,
make up a good deal of life to most of us.

One is inclined to gather from his books, and from the statements
accredited to him in magazines and newspapers, that he never took women
very seriously. He may not have done so--save those who were very near
and dear to him, and they were set in a sacred shrine of their own--but
he certainly always treated women very charmingly; and the young girl
relatives and friends, who were accustomed to be much in his home
circle, had never any reason to complain of the lack of the most dainty
and courtly attentions or of a most constant and spontaneous kindness
from the somewhat solemn youth, who, like other youths of twenty,
considered that it showed a great knowledge of the world to affect a
rather cynical disdain of the feminine half of humanity. In himself
there was, curiously enough, always a reminder of the feminine; an
almost girlish look passed now and again, in those days, over the thin
delicately-tinted face, and a womanly gentleness in voice and manner
reminded one of his mother.

The same ready sympathy, the same power, as it were, of putting himself
into a friend's place and entering with heart and soul into the affairs
of others which made him so interested a listener to a young girl's
story of her childhood's plays, made him in his later years th