ffered; hemorrhage was frequent and often alarming. In one of these
accesses, unable to speak, he wrote, "Do not be frightened. If this is
the end it is an easy one."

Many scraps written by him in circumstances like these used to exist;
some of them, though brief, were rich in the simple eloquence of
indignation.

Almost no climate did him any good: in 1880-1881, he chiefly suffered at
Davos, and in the tempests of September, in Braemar. At Davos he had few
consolations except the society of Mr. J. A. Symonds (the Opalstein of
his essay on "Talk and Talkers") and his family. He was still attached
to the indigent Muse of History: meditating a "History of the
Highlands," and another book on that much trampled topic, the Union of
1707. When one thinks of the commercial statistics necessary to the
student of the Union--to take that grim aspect of it alone--_enfin_, "I
have been there, and would not go." In the nature of things the History
of the Union would have become a romance, with that impudent,
entertaining rogue, Ker of Kersland, and his bewildered Cameronians, for
the heroes: with Hamilton the waverer, and the dark, sardonic Lockhart
of Carnwath, and Daniel Defoe as the English looker-on. The study of
Highland history led to the reading of the Trial of James of the Glens,
and the vain hunt for Alan Breck, and so to "Kidnapped."

Stevenson felt and described the exhilaration of Alpine mornings, but
his style was as sensitive as his bronchial apparatus, and he declares
that when he tried to write, the style suffered from "yeasty inflation,"
while his nights were haunted by the nightmares of his childhood.

The next change carried him to a cottage near Pitlochry, whence he wrote
that he was engaged in the composition of "crawlers." The first and best
of these, "Thrawn Janet," was (with his "Tod Lapraik" in "Kidnapped")
the only pendant to Scott's "Wandering Willie's Tale," in the northern
vernacular. The tale has a limited circle; no Southern can appreciate
all its merits, the thing is so absolutely and essentially Scots;
especially the atmosphere. He said that it was "true for a hill parish
in Scotland in old days, not true for mankind and the world." So it is
fortunate to be a native of a hill parish in Scotland!

"The Merry Men," as "a fantasia or vision of the sea," is excellent; the
poor negro never was, to myself, "convincing." However, knowing
Stevenson's taste in art, I designed for him, in Skeltic taste, a