were staying with his father and mother.

These were red-letter days in my calendar alike on account of
pleasant intercourse with his honoured father and himself. Here is
my pen-and-ink portrait of R. L. Stevenson, thrown down at the
time:

Mr Stevenson's is, indeed, a very picturesque and striking figure.
Not so tall probably as he seems at first sight from his extreme
thinness, but the pose and air could not be otherwise described
than as distinguished. Head of fine type, carried well on the
shoulders and in walking with the impression of being a little
thrown back; long brown hair, falling from under a broadish-brimmed
Spanish form of soft felt hat, Rembrandtesque; loose kind of
Inverness cape when walking, and invariable velvet jacket inside
the house. You would say at first sight, wherever you saw him,
that he was a man of intellect, artistic and individual, wholly out
of the common. His face is sensitive, full of expression, though
it could not be called strictly beautiful. It is longish,
especially seen in profile, and features a little irregular; the
brow at once high and broad. A hint of vagary, and just a hint in
the expression, is qualified by the eyes, which are set rather far
apart from each other as seems, and with a most wistful, and at the
same time possibly a merry impish expression arising over that, yet
frank and clear, piercing, but at the same time steady, and fall on
you with a gentle radiance and animation as he speaks. Romance, if
with an indescribable SOUPCON of whimsicality, is marked upon him;
sometimes he has the look as of the Ancient Mariner, and could fix
you with his glittering e'e, and he would, as he points his
sentences with a movement of his thin white forefinger, when this