ut their lives and which even
the distance of two seas failed to obliterate. They kept up a lively
correspondence and Mr. Colvin aided him with the publication of his
writings while he was absent from his own country. After his death,
according to Stevenson's wishes, Mr. Colvin edited a large collection of
his letters and in the notes which he added paid his friend many
splendid tributes which show him to be a fair critic as well as an
ardent admirer. "He had only to speak," he says, "in order to be
recognized in the first minute for a witty and charming gentleman, and
within the first five minutes for a master spirit and man of genius."

Louis's long absences from home often troubled his mother and caused her
to complain when writing. In one answer to her about this time he said:

"You must not be vexed at my absences, you must understand I shall be a
nomad, more or less, until my days be done. You don't know how much I
used to long for it in the old days; how I used to go and look at the
trains leaving, and wish to go with them. And now, you know, that I have
a little more that is solid under my feet, you must take my nomadic
habit as a part of me. Just wait till I am in swing and you will see
that I shall pass more of my life with you than elsewhere; only take me
as I am and give me time. I _must_ be a bit of a vagabond."

For all so little of his writing was ever done in his own country,
nevertheless he turned to Scotland again and again for the setting of
his stories and the subject of his essays. Although he often spoke
harshly of Edinburgh when at home, he paid her many loving tributes in
writing of her in a foreign land: "The quaint grey-castled city where
the bells clash of a Sunday, and the wind squalls, and the salt showers
fly and beat.... I do not even know if I desire to live there, but let
me hear in some far land a kindred voice sing out 'Oh, why left I my
hame?' and it seems at once as if no beauty under the kind heavens, and
no society of the wise and good, can repay me for my absence from my own
country. And although I think I would rather die elsewhere, yet in my
heart of hearts I long to be buried among good Scotch clods. I will say
it fairly, it grows on me with every year; there are no stars so lovely
as the Edinburgh street lamps. When I forget thee, Auld Reekie, may my
right hand forget its cunning."

CHAPTER V

AMATEUR EMIGRANT

"Hope went before them
And the world was wide."