e friend
of the Samoans, the champion of Samoan liberties, and, all through his
life, the one man whom the men and women who knew him loved with the
love that is only given to the very few, and those the few, too often,
whose death in life's prime, or before it, prove them to have been among
those whom the old poet tells us 'the gods love.'

Nothing at this time was more remarkable in Mr Stevenson than his
extraordinary youthfulness of mind. At an age when other young men
affect to be blase and world weary he was delightfully and fearlessly
boyish. Boyish even in his occasional half-comic solemnity of
appearance; he was boyish likewise in his charming jests and jokes, and,
above all, in his hearty delight in any outdoor 'ploy' that came in his
way.

A comical instance of this nearness of the boy to the surface in him
displayed itself one grey east-windy afternoon at Leven, when one saw
quite another side to him than the literary and dilettante one
displayed, with something of a mannered affectation, the day before in
'The Turret' drawing-room. He had walked down to the sands with his aunt
and there were assembled various younger members of the Balfour clique,
and some whom age and sex ought perhaps to have taught to despise,
though it had not, the hoydenish pleasures of 'a sea-house.' A
'sea-house,' for the benefit of the uninitiated, is a deep hole dug in
the sand while the tide is out, and the sand taken from the hole is
built round in broad, high walls to make the fort resist as long as
possible the rush of the incoming waves. It takes hours to make, but no
trouble is too great, for is there not the fierce joy of adventure at
the last when the waves finally win in the struggle and the
huddled-together inmates of the now submerged house are thoroughly
soaked with spray and salt water?

The 'sea-house,' the shouts of its builders, the tempting curl on the
waves, as each one came a little further, the slight rise of the wind
driving the breakers hurriedly landwards, were evidently too much for Mr
Stevenson. One moment the weight of his nineteen years and the duty of
politeness to his aunt restrained him, the next Mrs Balfour was left
standing alone, and overcome with laughter, while Louis was in the sea
house scolding, praising, and exhorting all at once, but above all
imploring us to 'sit it out a little longer' as wave after wave widened
the breach in the ramparts of sand, and

'In every hole the sea came