ow Sir, Douglas Maclagan sang his
delightful songs. Mr Sam Bough's hearty laugh rang out among the
artists, and Sir R. Christison, and Syme, and Keith, and Lister, had
made the Edinburgh medical world famous. Professors Masson, Tait,
Kelland, Crum-Brown, Fleeming-Jenkin--in whose theatricals R. L.
Stevenson took a picturesque part--and a host of other well-known names
were among the guests at dinners, and most beloved personality of all,
perhaps, Dr John Brown, accompanied by his 'doggies' still nodded to us
out of his carriage window, or left wonderful scraps of drawings on the
hall tables as he passed out from seeing a patient. And everywhere in
that pleasant world the Stevenson family were welcome and well known.

By the host of young people who are now in turn taking the busy work of
life, from which so many of the elders are resting for ever, parties at
17 Heriot Row and at Swanston were much appreciated. Dinner parties for
young people were not then so common as now, and the delightful ones
given by Mr and Mrs Thomas Stevenson were greatly enjoyed. The guests
were carefully chosen, and limited to ten or twelve, so that
conversation at dinner was general. And how amusing that conversation
was! The humour of father and son as they drew each other out was
wonderful, they capped each other's good things, and somehow made less
gifted folk shine in the conversation also in a way peculiar to them and
which was fully shared by Mrs Thomas Stevenson, who made the most
charming of hostesses. Father and son on these occasions were simply
full of jests and jollity, everything started an argument, and every
argument lent itself to fun. It is odd that nothing definite of those
clever sayings of theirs seems to return to one; it is only, as it were,
the memory of an aroma that filled the air sweetly at the time, and is
still faintly present with one that remains; the actual 'bon-mots' have
unhappily passed away. It is consoling to find that Mr Edmund Gosse, who
in _Kit-Cats_ writes delightfully of his friend Louis Stevenson, notes
the same intangible character of his talk.

After the little dinners there were delightful informal dances, to which
nephews, nieces, friends, and neighbours came as well as the dinner
guests, and one can still remember with a smile, perilously near to
tears, Mr Thomas Stevenson driving his unwilling son to dance the
old-time dance 'Sir Roger de Coverley,' which the elder man loved and
the younger prof