yawn if you passed ten minutes with him in a railway-carriage,
might well take a lesson from this man, if it had the brains.
Picture to yourself (it is not hard) an average suburb of London.
The long rows of identical bilious brick houses, with the
inevitable lace curtains, a symbol merely of the will and power to
wash; the awful nondescript object, generally under glass, in the
front window - the shrine of the unknown god of art; the sombre
invariable citizen, whose garb gives no suggestion of his
occupation or his tastes - a person, it would seem, only by
courtesy; the piano-organ the music of the day, and the hideous
voice of the vendor of half-penny papers the music of the night;
could anything be less promising than such a row of houses for the
theatre of romance? Set a realist to walk down one of these
streets: he will inquire about milk-bills and servants' wages,
latch-keys and Sunday avocations, and come back with a tale of
small meannesses and petty respectabilities, written in the
approved modern fashion. Yet Stevenson, it seems likely, could not
pass along such a line of brick bandboxes without having his pulses
set a-throbbing by the imaginative possibilities of the place. Of
his own Lieutenant Brackenbury Rich he says:



'The succession of faces in the lamplight stirred the lieutenant's
imagination; and it seemed to him as if he could walk for ever in
that stimulating city atmosphere and surrounded by the mystery of
four million private lives. He glanced at the houses and marvelled
what was passing behind those warmly lighted windows; he looked
into face after face, and saw them each intent upon some unknown
interest, criminal or kindly.'