The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls | Page 9

father, he knew, had different plans for him, however. Of course,
Louis would follow in his footsteps and be the sixth Stevenson to hold
a place on the Board of Northern Lights. So, although he had little heart
in the work, he entered the University of Edinburgh and spent the next
three and a half years studying for a science degree.
The summer of 1868 he was sent with an engineering party to
Anstruther, on the coast, where a breakwater was being built. There he
had his first opportunity of seeing some of the practical side of
engineering. It was rough work, but he enjoyed it. Later he spent three
weeks on Earraid Island, off Mull, a place which left a strong
impression on his mind and figured afterward as the spot where David
Balfour was shipwrecked.
Among the experiences at that time which pleased him most was a
chance to descend in a diver's dress to the foundation of the harbor they
were building. In his essays, "Random Memories," he tells of the
"dizzy muddleheaded joy" he had in his surroundings, swaying like a
reed, and grabbing at the fish which darted past him.
In writing afterward of these years he says: "What I gleaned I am sure I
do not know, but indeed I had already my own private determination to
be an author ... though I haunted the breakwater by day, and even loved
the place for the sake of the sunshine, the thrilling sea-side air, the wash
of the waves on the sea face, the green glimmer of the diver's helmets
far below.... My own genuine occupation lay elsewhere and my only
industry was in the hours when I was not on duty. I lodged with a
certain Bailie Brown, a carpenter by trade, and there as soon as dinner
was despatched ... drew my chair to the table and proceeded to pour
forth literature.

"I wish to speak with sympathy of my education as an engineer. It takes
a man into the open air; keeps him hanging about harbor sides, the
richest form of idling; it carries him to wild islands; it gives him a taste
of the genial danger of the sea ... and when it has done so it carries him
back and shuts him in an office. From the roaring skerry and the wet
thwart of the tossing boat, he passes to the stool and desk, and with a
memory full of ships and seas and perilous headlands and shining
pharos, he must apply his long-sighted eyes to the pretty niceties of
drawing or measure his inaccurate mind with several pages of
consecutive figures."
"The roaring skerry and the tossing boat," appealed to him as they had
to his grandfather before him, but they did not balance his dislike for
the "office and the stool" or make him willing to devote his time and
energy to working for them, so his university record was very poor.
"No one ever played the truant with more deliberate care," he says,
"and no one ever had more certificates (of attendance) for less
education."
One thing that he gained from his days at the university was the
friendship of Professor Fleeming Jenkin. He was fifteen years older
than Louis, but they had many common interests and the professor had
much good influence over him. He was one of the first to see promise
in his writing and encouraged him to go on with it.
Both the professor and Mrs. Jenkin were much interested in dramatics
and each year brought a group of friends together at their house for
private theatricals. Stevenson was a constant visitor at their home,
joining heartily in these plays and looking forward to them, although he
never took any very important part.
After Professor Jenkin's death Stevenson wrote his biography, and says
it was a "mingled pain and pleasure to dig into the past of a dead friend,
and find him, at every spadeful, shine brighter."
About this time Thomas Stevenson bought Swanston Cottage in the
Pentland Hills, about five miles from Edinburgh, and for the next
fourteen years the family spent their summers there, and Louis often

went out in winter as well. It ever remained one of his favorite spots
and with Colinton stood out as a place that meant much in his life.
[Illustration: Swanston Cottage]
These years saw great change in him; from a frank and happy child he
had grown into a lonely, moody boy making few friends and shunning
the social life that his father's position in Edinburgh offered him. He
describes himself as a "lean, ugly, unpopular student," but those who
knew him never applied the term "ugly" to him at any time.
At Swanston he explored the hills alone and grew to know them so well