A BOY.]

The next year, therefore, he decided to devote himself entirely to
literature.

He was by heredity predisposed to weak lungs. For the greater part of
his life he moved from place to place, searching for some location
that would improve his health and allow him to write. He lived for a
while in Switzerland, in the south of France, in the south of England,
in the Adirondack Mountains, and in California. In 1880 he married in
California, Mrs. Fanny Osbourne, of whom he wrote:--

"Steel-true and blade-straight,
The great artificer made my mate."

By a former marriage she had a son, who, at the age of thirteen,
inspired Stevenson to write that exciting romance of adventure,
_Treasure Island_, published in book form in 1883. This and the
remarkable story, _The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_
(1886), made him so famous that when he visited New York in 1887, a
newspaper there offered him $10,000 for a weekly article during the
year.

He preferred to accept an offer of $3500 for twelve monthly articles
for a magazine.

The most romantic part of his life began in 1888, when he chartered a
yacht in San Francisco for a cruise among the South Sea Islands. He
had the enthusiasm of a boy for this trip, which was planned to
benefit his health. Almost as many adventures befell him as Robinson
Crusoe. At one time Stevenson became so ill that he was left with his
wife on one of the Society Islands while the yacht sailed away for
repairs. Before the boat returned, both his food and money were
exhausted, and he and Mrs. Stevenson were forced to live on the bounty
of the natives, who adopted him into one of their tribes and gave him
the name of Tusitala.

He wandered for three and a half years among the islands of the
Southern Pacific, visiting Australia twice. On one trip he called at
thirty-three small coral islands, and wrote, "Hackney cabs have more
variety than atolls."

He finally selected for his residence the island of Samoa, where he
spent the last three and a half years of his life. He died suddenly in
his forty-fifth year, and was buried on the summit of a Samoan
mountain near his home.

In 1893 he wrote to George Meredith:--

"In fourteen years I have not had a day's real health; I have
wakened sick and gone to bed weary; and I have done my work
unflinchingly. I have written in bed, and written out of it, written
in sickness, written torn by coughing, written when my head swam for
w