In the afternoon, if fine and dry, we went walking, and Stevenson
would sometimes tell us stories of his short experience at the
Scottish Bar, and of his first and only brief. I remember him
contrasting that with his experiences as an engineer with Bob Bain,
who, as manager, was then superintending the building of a
breakwater. Of that time, too, he told the choicest stories, and
especially of how, against all orders, he bribed Bob with five
shillings to let him go down in the diver's dress. He gave us a
splendid description - finer, I think, than even that in his
MEMORIES - of his sensations on the sea-bottom, which seems to have
interested him as deeply, and suggested as many strange fancies, as
anything which he ever came across on the surface. But the
possibility of enterprises of this sort ended - Stevenson lost his
interest in engineering.

Stevenson's father had, indeed, been much exercised in his day by
theological questions and difficulties, and though he remained a
staunch adherent of the Established Church of Scotland he knew well
and practically what is meant by the term "accommodation," as it is
used by theologians in reference to creeds and formulas; for he had
over and over again, because of the strict character of the
subscription required from elders of the Scottish Church declined,
as I have said, to accept the office. In a very express sense you
could see that he bore the marks of his past in many ways - a
quick, sensitive, in some ways even a fantastic-minded man, yet
with a strange solidity and common-sense amid it all, just as
though ferns with the veritable fairies' seed were to grow out of a
common stone wall. He looked like a man who had not been without