Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great | Page 9

she was very practical, very sensible, very patient. Then she
had wit, insight, sympathy and that fluidity of spirit which belongs only
to the Elect Few who know that nothing really matters much either way.
Such a person does not contradict, set folks straight as to dates, and
shake the red rag of wordy warfare, even in the interests of truth.
Then keeping house on Silverado Hill was only playing at
"keep-house," and the way all hands entered into the game made it the
genuine thing. People who keep house in earnest or do anything else in
dead earnest are serious, but not sincere. Sincere people are those who
can laugh--even laugh at themselves--and thus are they saved from
ossification of the heart and fatty degeneration of the cerebrum. The
Puritans forgot how to play, otherwise they would never have hanged
the witches or gone after the Quakers with fetters and handcuffs. Uric
acid and crystals in the blood are bad things, but they are worse when
they get into the soul.
That most delightful story of "Treasure Island" was begun as a tale for
Lloyd Osbourne, around the evening campfire. Then the hearers begged
that it be written out, and so it was begun, one chapter a day. As fast as
a chapter was written it was read in the evening to an audience that
hung on every word and speculated as to what the characters would do
next. All applauded, all criticized--all made suggestions as to what was
"true," that is to say, as to what the parties actually did and said.
"Treasure Island" is the best story of adventure ever written, and if
anybody knows a better recipe for story-writing than the plan of writing

just for fun, for some one else, it has not yet been discovered.
The miracle is that Robert Louis the Scotchman should have been so
perfectly understood and appreciated by this little family from the other
side of the world.
The Englishman coming to America speaks a different language from
ours--his allusions, symbols, aphorisms belong to another sphere. He
does not understand us, nor we him. But Robert Louis Stevenson and
Fanny Osbourne must have been "universals," for they never really had
to get acquainted: they loved the same things, spoke a common
language, and best of all recognized that what we call "life" isn't life at
the last, and that an anxious stirring, clutching for place, pelf and power
is not nearly so good in results as to play the flute, tell stories and keep
house just for fun.
The Stevenson spirit of gentle raillery was well illustrated by Mrs.
Strong in an incident that ran somewhat thus: A certain boastful young
person was telling of a funeral where among other gorgeous things
were eight "pallberries."
Said Mrs. Stevenson in admiration, "Just now, a-think, pallberries at a
funeral; how delightful!" "My dear," said Robert Louis, reprovingly,
"you know perfectly well that we always have pallberries at our
funerals in Samoa."
"Quite true, my dear, provided it is pallberry season."
"And suppose it is not pallberry season, do we not have them tinted?"
"Yes, but there is a tendency to pick them green--that is awful!"
"But not so awful as to leave them on the bushes until they get rotten."
Finck in his fine book, "Romantic Love and Personal Beauty," says that
not once in a hundred thousand times do you find man and wife who
have reached a state of actual understanding.

Incompatibility comes from misunderstanding and misconstruing
motives, and more often, probably, attributing motives where none
exists. And until a man and a woman comprehend the working of each
other's mind and "respect the mood," there is no mental mating, and
without a mental mating we can talk of rights and ownership, but not of
marriage.
The delight of creative work lies in self-discovery: you are mining
nuggets of power out of your own cosmos, and the find comes as a
great and glad surprise. The kindergarten baby who discovers he can
cut out a pretty shape from colored paper, and straightway wants to run
home to show mamma his find, is not far separated from the literary
worker who turns a telling phrase, and straightway looks for Her, to
read it to double his joy by sharing it. Robert Louis was ever
discovering new beauties in his wife and she in him. Eliminate the
element of surprise and anticipate everything a person can do or say,
and love is a mummy. Thus do we get the antithesis--understanding and
surprise.
Marriage worked a miracle in Robert Louis; suddenly he became
industrious. He ordered that a bell should be tinkled at six o'clock every
morning or a whistle blown as a sign that he should "get away," and at
once he began the