The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Sea Fogs, by Robert Louis Stevenson

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Title: The Sea Fogs

Author: Robert Louis Stevenson

Release Date: March, 2004 [EBook #5272]
Posting Date: June 1, 2009

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SEA FOGS ***

Produced by David Schwan

THE SEA FOGS

By Robert Louis Stevenson

With an Introduction by Thomas Rutherford Bacon

Western Classics No. 1

A sheeted spectre white and tall,
The cold mist climbs the castle wall
And lays its hand upon thy cheek.

--Longfellow.

Introduction

Robert Louis Stevenson first came to California in 1879 for the
purpose of getting married. The things that delayed his marriage are
sufficiently set forth in his "Letters" (edited by Sidney Colvin) and
in his "Life" (written by Graham Balfour). It is here necessary to refer
only to the last of the obstacles, the breaking down of his health. It
is in connection with the evil thing that came to him at this time that
he first makes mention of "the sea fogs," that beset a large part of the
California coast. He speaks of them as poisonous; and poisonous they
are to any one who is afflicted with pulmonary weakness, but bracing and
glorious to others. They give the charm of climate to dwellers around
the great bay. How he took this first very serious attack of the
terrible malady is indicated in the letter to Edmund Gosse, dated April
16, 1880. His attitude toward death is shown here, and is further shown
in his little paper AEs Triplex, in which he successfully vindicates
his generation from the charge of cowardice in the face of death.
Stevenson's two distinguishing characteristics were his courage and his
determination to be happy as the right way of making other people
happy. His courage, far more than change of scene and climate, gave him
fourteen more years in which to contribute to the sweetness and light
of the world. These years were made fruitful to others by his determined
happiness, a happiness in which the main factor, outside of his own
determination, came from the companionship which his ma