n duty. I lodged with a
certain Bailie Brown, a carpenter by trade, and there as soon as dinner
was despatched ... drew my chair to the table and proceeded to pour
forth literature.

"I wish to speak with sympathy of my education as an engineer. It takes
a man into the open air; keeps him hanging about harbor sides, the
richest form of idling; it carries him to wild islands; it gives him a
taste of the genial danger of the sea ... and when it has done so it
carries him back and shuts him in an office. From the roaring skerry and
the wet thwart of the tossing boat, he passes to the stool and desk, and
with a memory full of ships and seas and perilous headlands and shining
pharos, he must apply his long-sighted eyes to the pretty niceties of
drawing or measure his inaccurate mind with several pages of consecutive
figures."

"The roaring skerry and the tossing boat," appealed to him as they had
to his grandfather before him, but they did not balance his dislike for
the "office and the stool" or make him willing to devote his time and
energy to working for them, so his university record was very poor. "No
one ever played the truant with more deliberate care," he says, "and no
one ever had more certificates (of attendance) for less education."

One thing that he gained from his days at the university was the
friendship of Professor Fleeming Jenkin. He was fifteen years older than
Louis, but they had many common interests and the professor had much
good influence over him. He was one of the first to see promise in his
writing and encouraged him to go on with it.

Both the professor and Mrs. Jenkin were much interested in dramatics and
each year brought a group of friends together at their house for private
theatricals. Stevenson was a constant visitor at their home, joining
heartily in these plays and looking forward to them, although he never
took any very important part.

After Professor Jenkin's death Stevenson wrote his biography, and says
it was a "mingled pain and pleasure to dig into the past of a dead
friend, and find him, at every spadeful, shine brighter."

About this time Thomas Stevenson bought Swanston Cottage in the Pentland
Hills, about five miles from Edinburgh, and for the next fourteen years
the family spent their summers there, and Louis often went out in
winter as well. It ever remained one of his favorite spots and with
Colinton stood out as a place that meant much in his life.

[Illustration: Swa