The Editor asks me to speak of Stevenson this week: because, since the
foundation of THE SPEAKER, as each new book of Stevenson's appeared, I
have had the privilege of writing about it here. So this column, too,
shall be filled; at what cost ripe journalists will understand, and
any fellow-cadet of letters may guess.

For when the telegram came, early on Monday morning, what was our
first thought, as soon as the immediate numbness of sorrow passed and
the selfish instinct began to reassert itself (as it always does) and
whisper "What have _I_ lost? What is the difference to _me_?" Was it
not something like this--"Put away books and paper and pen. Stevenson
is dead. Stevenson is dead, and now there is nobody left to write
for." Our children and grandchildren shall rejoice in his books; but
we of this generation possessed in the living man something that they
will not know. So long as he lived, though it were far from
Britain--though we had never spoken to him and he, perhaps, had barely
heard our names--we always wrote our best for Stevenson. To him each
writer amongst us--small or more than small--had been proud to have
carried his best. That best might be poor enough. So long as it was
not slipshod, Stevenson could forgive. While he lived, he moved men to
put their utmost even into writings that quite certainly would never
meet his eye. Surely another age will wonder over this curiosity of
letters--that for five years the needle of literary endeavor in Great
Britain has quivered towards a little island in the South Pacific, as
to its magnetic pole.

Yet he founded no school, though most of us from time to time have
poorly tried to copy him. He remained altogether inimitable, yet never
seemed conscious of his greatness. It was native in him to rejoice in