so possessed him that the first draft was finished
within three days. It was called "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr.
Hyde."

This story instantly created much discussion. Articles were written
about it, sermons were preached on it, and letters poured in from all
sorts of people with their theories about the strange tale. Six months
after it was published nearly forty thousand copies were sold in
England alone; but its greatest success was in America where its
popularity was immediate and its sale enormous.

One day he was attracted by a book of verses about children by Kate
Greenaway, and wondered why he could not write some too of the children
he remembered best of all. Scenes and doings in the days spent at
Colinton with his swarm of cousins; the games they had played and the
people they had known all trooped back with other memories of Edinburgh
days. As he recalled these children, they tripped from his pen until he
had a delightful collection of verses and determined to bring them
together in a book.

First he called it "The Penny Whistle," but soon changed the title to "A
Child's Garden of Verses" and dedicated it, with the following poem, to
the only one he said who would really understand the verses, the one who
had done so much to make his childhood days happy:

TO ALISON CUNNINGHAM

FROM HER BOY

"For the long nights you lay awake
And watched for my unworthy sake;
For your most comfortable hand
That led me through the uneven land;
For all the story-books you read;
For all the pains you comforted;
For all you pitied, all you bore
In sad and happy days of yore;--
My second Mother, my first wife,
The angel of my infant life--
From the sick child, now well and old,
Take, nurse, the little book you hold!

"And grant it, Heaven, that all who read,
May find as dear a nurse at need,
And every child who lists my rhyme,
In the bright fireside, nursery clime,
May hear it in as kind a voice
As made my childish days rejoice."

"Of course," he said, speaking of this dedication when he wrote to
Cummie about the book, "this is only a flourish, like taking off one's
hat, but still a person who has taken the trouble to write things does
not dedicate them to anyone without meaning it; and you must try to
take this dedication in place of a great many things that I might have
said, and that I ought to have done; to prove that I am not altogether