ene and a good time
coming, when experienced advisers shall send a man to the proper
measured level for the ode, the biography, or the religious tract; and a
nook may be found between the sea and Chimborazo, where Mr. Swinburne
shall be able to write more continently, and Mr. Browning somewhat
slower.

Is it a return of youth, or is it a congestion of the brain? It is a
sort of congestion, perhaps, that leads the invalid, when all goes well,
to face the new day with such a bubbling cheerfulness. It is certainly
congestion that makes night hideous with visions, all the chambers of a
many-storied caravanserai, haunted with vociferous nightmares, and many
wakeful people come down late for breakfast in the morning. Upon that
theory the cynic may explain the whole affair--exhilaration, nightmares,
pomp of tongue and all. But, on the other hand, the peculiar blessedness
of boyhood may itself be but a symptom of the same complaint, for the
two effects are strangely similar; and the frame of mind of the invalid
upon the Alps is a sort of intermittent youth, with periods of
lassitude. The fountain of Juventus does not play steadily in these
parts; but there it plays, and possibly nowhere else.

STEVENSON AT PLAY

STEVENSON AT PLAY

INTRODUCTION BY MR. LLOYD OSBOURNE

In an old note-book, soiled and dog-eared by much travelling, yellow and
musty with the long years it had lain hid in a Samoan chest, the present
writer came across the mimic war correspondence here presented to the
public. The stirring story of these tin-soldier campaigns occupies the
greater share of the book, though interspersed with many pages of
scattered verse, not a little Gaelic idiom and verb, a half-made will
and the chaptering of a novel. This game of tin soldiers, an intricate
"Kriegspiel," involving rules innumerable, prolonged arithmetical
calculations, constant measuring with foot-rules, and the throwing of
dice, sprang from the humblest beginnings--a row of soldiers on either
side and a deadly marble. From such a start it grew in size and
complexity until it became mimic war indeed, modelled closely upon real
conditions and actual warfare, requiring, on Stevenson's part, the use
of text-books and long conversations with military invalids; on mine,
all the pocket-money derived from my publishing ventures as well as a
considerable part of my printing stock in trade.

The abiding spirit of the child in Stevenson was seldom shown in