Delightfully suggestive and highly enjoyable, too, were the
meetings in the little drawing-room after dinner, when the
contrasted traits of father and son came into full play - when R.
L. Stevenson would sometimes draw out a new view by bold, half-
paradoxical assertion, or compel advance on the point from a new
quarter by a searching question couched in the simplest language,
or reveal his own latest conviction finally, by a few sentences as
nicely rounded off as though they had been written, while he rose
and gently moved about, as his habit was, in the course of those
more extended remarks. Then a chapter or two of THE SEA-COOK would
be read, with due pronouncement on the main points by one or other
of the family audience.

The reading of the book is one thing. It was quite another thing
to hear Stevenson as he stood reading it aloud, with his hand
stretched out holding the manuscript, and his body gently swaying
as a kind of rhythmical commentary on the story. His fine voice,
clear and keen it some of its tones, had a wonderful power of
inflection and variation, and when he came to stand in the place of
Silver you could almost have imagined you saw the great one-legged
John Silver, joyous-eyed, on the rolling sea. Yes, to read it in
print was good, but better yet to hear Stevenson read it.



CHAPTER II - TREASURE ISLAND AND SOME REMINISCENCES



WHEN I left Braemar, I carried with me a considerable portion of