Robert Louis Stevenson | Page 8

little boy whose gipsy instincts were already loudly calling to him to take 'the road' his wandering soul so dearly loved.
'Keepsake Mill' is a charming tribute to the joys of those illicit escapes and to the memories of the cousin playfellows now scattered in far lands, or for ever at rest from life's labour, who played in the garden where the delicate bright-eyed lad was the inventor and leader in their games.
One sweet fancy of the imaginative child, who all his life had a fine mental and physical courage in spite of his delicacy, is still recalled by his 'sister-cousin'; the graveyard wall was at one place high above the garden it partially enclosed, and the little boy, afflicted with no superstitious terrors, had an idea that the souls of the dead people at rest in 'God's acre,' peeped out at him from the chinks of the wall. And one feels sure that here as all through his life, shadowed by so much of suffering, he held fast, after a fashion of his own, the belief that goes deeper than his playful rendering of it in The Unseen Playmate seems at first to infer:
'Whene'er you're happy and cannot tell why, The Friend of the children is sure to be by.'
A faith that was taught him by an earnest father and by the loving voice of a mother who held it fast through her own happy childhood and the joys and sorrows that as wife and mother came to her in later years.
After the death of the Rev. Dr Balfour, in April 1860, the manse ceased to be the second home of Louis Stevenson, and in the November of that year his aunt, Miss Balfour, and the nephews and nieces who stayed with her moved to a house in Howard Place.
In 1858 he went to school, and from 1860 to 1861 he and his cousin, Lewis Charles Balfour, were together at Mr Henderson's preparatory school in India Street from which both went to the Academy in 1861. Of Lewis Stevenson,--who in later life was always called Louis or Lou by his family and friends,--Mr Henderson reports: 'Robert's reading is not loud, but impressive.'
In July he was in bed with scarlet fever on his examination day, which was a great disappointment to him. He had a first prize for reading that year; but his zeal over school and lessons was very short-lived, and he never hungered for scholastic honours.
As a child he did not learn quickly, and he was in his eighth year before he could read fluently for himself. Nevertheless his especial bent showed itself early, and when in his sixth year he dictated a History of Moses, which he illustrated, giving the men pipes in their mouths. This, and an account of Travels in Perth, composed in his ninth year, are still in existence. The History of Moses was written because an uncle had offered a prize to his own children for the best paper on the subject, and the little Louis was so disappointed at not being asked to compete that he was finally included among the competitors, and did a paper which though not best was still good and which was given a prize. He had begun to print it for himself, with much toil, but his mother offered to write it out from his dictation. Another composition of this time was a fierce story of shipwreck and fighting with savages.
In 1863 he was sent for a few months to a boarding school kept by a Mr Wyatt at Spring Grove, near London. Life at a boarding school was misery to a lad so fond of wandering at his own sweet will as the small Louis, and he was full of distress at the prospect of leaving home. In Random Memories he gives his ideas as to going to school, and expresses his belief that it is not so much the first night or day at school that is so terrible to a courageous child, as the dismay at the thought of leaving home with its familiar life and surroundings, and the painful suspense for some days before the plunge into the new world of school is taken. It was, he says, this miserable feeling of suspense that made him share his sorrows with a desolate, but amiable cat in the Easter Road, which mingled its woes with his and as it purred against him consoled him.
His tender-hearted parents were so touched by his evident affliction, and especially by the little story of the cat that his father took him a trip round the coast of Fife in The Pharos and he thus made an early and delightful acquaintance with some of the lights and harbours which his father had gone to inspect.
Although the cousin, Lewis Charles Balfour,