partly, but I think never wholly quenched, by ill health, responsibility
and advance of years.

"His private thoughts and prospects must often have been of the
gloomiest, but he seems to have borne his unhappiness with a courage as
high as he ever afterwards displayed."

Sidney Colvin he met some time previous while visiting relatives in
England, and their friendship was renewed when they met again in
London; a friendship which lasted throughout 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