On July 14, 1875, he passed his final law examinations, and was admitted
to the Scottish bar. He was now entitled to wear a wig and gown, place
a brass plate with his name upon the door of 17 Heriot Row, and "have
the fourth or fifth share of the services of a clerk" whom it is said he
didn't even know by sight. For a few months he made some sort of a
pretense at practising, but it amounted to very little. Gradually he
ceased paying daily visits to the Parliament House to wait for a case,
but settled himself instead in the room on the top floor at home and
began to write, seriously this time--it was to be his life-work from now
on--and the law was forgotten.

His first essays were published in the _Cornhill Magazine_ and _The
Portfolio_ under the initials R.L.S., which signature in time grew so
familiar to his friends and to those who admired his writings it became
a second name for him, and as R.L.S. he is often referred to.

He was free now to roam as he chose and spent much time in Paris with
Bob. The life there in the artists' quarter suited him as well as it
had at Fontainebleau. There, among other American artists, he was
associated with Mr. Will Low, a painter, whom he saw much of when he
came to New York.

One September he took a walking trip in the Cévenne Mountains with no
other companion than a little gray donkey, Modestine, who carried his
pack and tried his patience by turns with her pace, which was "as much
slower than a walk as a walk is slower than a run," as he tells in the
chronicle of the trip.

A visit at Grez in 1876 was to mark a point in his life. Heretofore the