" Carlyle.

The mother of Robert Louis Stevenson, when asked to inscribe a motto
on a guest list, wrote:--

"The world is so full of a number of things,
I am sure we should all be happy as kings."

"That," she said, "includes the whole gospel of R. L. S." These
lines are certainly a concise statement of the spirit in which her
son undertook to expound the benefits to be derived from "performing
our petty round of irritating concerns and duties with laughter and
kind faces." Before he could walk steadily, it had been discovered
he was heavily handicapped by the burden of ill-health. Still the
good fairy who came to his christening endowed him with "sweet
content," a gift which carried him triumphantly through all
hampering difficulties. He never faltered in the task he set
himself--the task of happiness. He began to preach his gospel as a
child. He would not have his tawdry toy sword disparaged even by his
father. "I tell you," he said, "the sword is of gold, the sheath of
silver, and the boy who has it is quite contented." In the same
manner he transformed a coddling shawl into a wrap fit for a soldier
on a night march. To the end of his days he was eager to be happy.
We are told

"Two men looked out from prison bars;
One saw mud, the other stars."

When bodily ailments held Stevenson as a captive in bonds, his keen
sight pierced through the obstructions which held him caged. We are
not left in doubt, when we read his books, as to whether his gaze
was earthwards or to heaven's distant lamps. He taught others to see
with his clear vision, and he expounded his gospel in so taking a
manner, even if the import of it had savoured more of mud than
stars, it would have been studied for its style. He had the true
artist soul within him. He wished to create or represent what came
within the range of those brilliant dark eyes of his, so, with
infinite care and effort, he strove to attune his words to the even
cadence and harmony with which he wished to amaze us, for, as A.J.
Balfour said, "he was a man of the finest and most delicate
imagination, a style which, for grace and suppleness, for its power
of being at once turned to any purpose which the author desired, has
seldom been matched." It is difficult for those who knew him before
he had, by pure hard work, won his way to fame, to realise how one
physically so fragile, of so light-somely versatile and whimsical a
nature, apparently so ready to