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."


In the summer of 1879 R.L.S. was once more seized with the desire to