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*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN
ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*
Underwoods by Robert Louis Stevenson.
Scanned and proofed by
David Price, email [email protected]

Underwoods
Of all my verse, like not a single line;
But like my title, for it is not
mine.
That title from a better man I stole:
Ah, how much better, had
I stol'n the whole!
DEDICATION
THERE are men and classes of men that stand above the
common
herd: the soldier, the sailor and the shepherd not
unfrequently; the
artist rarely; rarely still, the clergyman; the physician almost as a rule.
He is the flower (such as it is) of our civilisation; and when that stage
of man is done with, and only remembered to be marvelled at in history,
he will be thought to have shared as little as any in the defects of the
period, and most notably exhibited the virtues of the race. Generosity
he has, such as is possible to those who
practise an art, never to those
who drive a trade; discretion, tested by a hundred secrets; tact, tried in a
thousand
embarrassments; and what are more important, Heraclean

cheerfulness and courage. So it is that he brings air and
cheer into the
sickroom, and often enough, though not so often as he wishes, brings
healing.
Gratitude is but a lame sentiment; thanks, when they are
expressed,
are often more embarrassing than welcome; and yet I must set forth
mine to a few out of many doctors who have
brought me comfort and
help: to Dr. Willey of San Francisco, whose kindness to a stranger it
must be as grateful to him, as it is touching to me, to remember; to Dr.
Karl Ruedi of Davos, the good genius of the English in his frosty
mountains; to Dr. Herbert of Paris, whom I knew only for a week, and
to Dr.
Caissot of Montpellier, whom I knew only for ten days, and

who have yet written their names deeply in my memory; to Dr.

Brandt of Royat; to Dr. Wakefield of Nice; to Dr. Chepmell, whose
visits make it a pleasure to be ill; to Dr. Horace
Dobell, so wise in
counsel; to Sir Andrew Clark, so unwearied in kindness and to that
wise youth, my uncle, Dr. Balfour.
I forget as many as I remember; and I ask both to pardon
me, these
for silence, those for inadequate speech. But one name I have kept on
purpose to the last, because it is a
household word with me, and
because if I had not received
favours from so many hands and in so
many quarters of the
world, it should have stood upon this page alone:
that of my friend Thomas Bodley Scott of Bournemouth. Will he accept

this, although shared among so many, for a dedication to
himself?
and when next my ill-fortune (which has thus its
pleasant side) brings
him hurrying to me when he would fain sit down to meat or lie down to
rest, will he care to remember that he takes this trouble for one who is
not fool enough to be ungrateful?
R. L. S.
SKERRYVORE,
BOURNEMOUTH.
NOTE
THE human conscience has fled of late the troublesome
domain of
conduct for what I should have supposed to be the less congenial field
of art: there she may now be said to
rage, and with special severity in
all that touches dialect; so that in every novel the letters of the alphabet
are
tortured, and the reader wearied, to commemorate shades of

mis-pronunciation. Now spelling is an art of great difficulty in my eyes,
and I am inclined to lean upon the printer, even in common practice,
rather than to venture abroad upon new
quests. And the Scots tongue
has an orthography of its own, lacking neither "authority nor author."
Yet the temptation is great to lend a little guidance to the bewildered
Englishman. Some simple phonetic artifice might defend your verses
from barbarous mishandling, and yet not injure any vested interest. So

it seems at first; but there are rocks ahead. Thus, if I wish the diphthong
OU to have its proper value, I may write OOR instead of OUR; many
have done so and lived, and the
pillars of the universe remained
unshaken. But if I did so, and came presently to DOUN, which is the
classical Scots
spelling of the English DOWN, I should begin to feel
uneasy; and if I went on a little farther, and came to a classical
Scots
word, like STOUR or DOUR or CLOUR, I should know
precisely
where I was - that is to say, that I was out of
sight of land on those
high seas of spelling reform