and in his manner of speech. However,
his contemporaries have left their printed records of his appearance
and his peculiar personality. Henley's perfect description in verse
is too well known to need quotation. Ugly, Stevenson called himself,
but this was not so. He was original in looks and mind, his lank
brown hair straggled over his high forehead, and framed his thin,
high-cheeked, sallow, oval face. His brown eyes and full red lips
gave a dash of colour to his features. His schoolmate, Mr. Baildon,
says truly, "his eyes were always genial, however gaily the lights
danced in them; but about the mouth there was something of trickery
and mocking, as of a spirit that had already peeped behind the
scenes of Life's pageant, and more than guessed its unrealities."

Repose he never tasted of, for his zest in life, his adventurous
inclination to explore, his insatiable curiosity, kept him ever
moving at topmost speed. To understand the mainspring which affected
the man's character--the machinery that supplied him with an
inexhaustible nerve force and vitality--Mr Colvin explains, "besides
humour, which kept wholesome laughter always ready at his lips, was
a perfectly warm, loyal, and tender heart, which, through all his
experiments and agitations, made the law of kindness the one ruling
law of his life." He marvelled, on his way through the Pilgrim's
Progress, why the man with the muck-rake grovelled in straws and
dust, and never looked up to the glittering crown held out for his
acceptance. This mulish blindness puzzled the boy, and when he grew
up, he opened the eyes, and illumined by his work and his example
the dreary-hearted who wasted their opportunities, not seeing the
number of beautiful things which made the world into a royal
pleasance. With tuneful words he persuaded those who plodded with
dusty feet along the high-road to pause for a while and saunter
among the greener fields of earth, and through the stimulating
courage that shone through every chapter he wrote, he, like his
sires, "the ready and the strong of word," has, by his works, left
lights to shine upon the paths of men.

End of Project Gutenberg's Robert Louis Stevenson, by E. Blantyre Simpson

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON ***

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