a famed Robert Louis need not have despised. But he abhorred
constraint and codes of rules. He was a born adventurer and
practical experimentist in life, and he explains he spent much of
his time scraping acquaintance with all classes of men and
womenkind. His insatiable curiosity made him thirst to taste of the
bitter as well as the sweet, to be pricked by the thorn as well as
smell the rose. He was quick to see the humorous side of a tale or
episode, but he was tenderly sensitive to ridicule. When he appeared
among his legal brothers-in-law in the Parliament House, a wit there
among the unemployed advocates in the old hall called him the Gifted
Boy. He winced under the laugh, and fled from "the interminable
patter of legal feet." He had cultivated notoriety by his shabby
dress and lank locks. He did not realise, as an American says, "If
you look as if you had slept in your clothes most men will jump to
the conclusion that you have, and you will never get to know them
well enough to explain that your head is so full of noble thoughts
that you haven't time to bother with the dandruff on your
shoulders." In a corridor in the Parliament House, where the men
called to the Bar keep open-mouthed boxes for documents to be
slipped in, one bore on its plate the inscription R. L. Stevenson.
When that alien-looking advocate with unsuspected gifts had cast off
the wig and gown, and had busied himself for years filling up reams
of paper with his thoughts and studies on people, places, and
things, sightseers going through the Courts would be shown this
unused box, which remained so empty while those around it of his old
rivals at the Spec, were full, as they were scaling the heights
which lead to titles and the Bench.

Stevenson wrote of Edinburgh and her climate in a carping spirit,
nevertheless he accorded due praise to her unsurpassed beauty. "No