at its darkest:

_"And werena my heart licht I wad die!"_

Having finished "Catriona," at about the age that Scott had when he
wrote his first novel, "Waverley," Stevenson thought of "Weir of
Hermiston," ("I thought of Mr. Pickwick," says Dickens with admirable
simplicity), and fell to that work furiously, as was his wont when a
great theme dawned on him. But soon, as usual, came the cold fit; his
inspirations being intermittent for some untraced reason, physical or
psychological. Possibly he foresaw the practical difficulty of his
initial idea: that the Roman Father should sit on the bench of Scottish
Themis and try his own son on a capital charge. This would not have been
permitted to occur in Scotland, even when "the Fifteen" were first
constituted into a Court. If humane emotions did not forbid, it must
have been clear that no Scottish judge (they were not "kinless loons")
would have permitted his son to be found guilty. Conceivably this
damping circumstance occurred to Stevenson. He dropped, for a while, the
hanging judge, and began "St. Ives" as a short story. It was now that,
early in 1893, under an attack of hemorrhage, Stevenson dictated his
tale to his stepdaughter, on his fingers, in the gesture alphabet of the
dumb. Perhaps this feat is as marvelous as Scott's dictating "The Bride
of Lammermoor," _in tormentis_, to Will Laidlaw.

We see how his maladies hung on Stevenson's flank, even in Samoa, where
his health had so remarkably improved, and permitted to him unwonted
activities. After a visit to Sydney, he took up "The Ebb-Tide" in
collaboration with Mr. Osbourne, whose draft of the first chapters he
warmly applauded. It is not one of his central successes. His pencil was
dipped in moral gloom, but even to the odious Cockney scoundrel, Huish,
his Shakespearian tolerance accorded the virtue of indomitable courage.
He could not help filling the book full with his abundant vitality and
his keen observation of the islands and the beachcombers. The thing, to
use an obsolete piece of slang, is _vecu_. There were other projects,
many of them, which dawned rosily, and faded into the grey; and there
was the rich and copious correspondence dated from Vailima. His friends,
no doubt, hearing of his good health, now and then, hoped to see his
face again; the grouse on the hills of home were calling their eternal
_Come back! come back!_

Stevenson, who himself could live contentedly on so little, was the most
ope