he first man upon the earth.'

Passages like these indicate Stevenson's quality. He was no
carpet-knight; he had the true adventurer's blood in his veins. He and
Drake and the Belgian omnibus-driver should have gone to the Indies
together. Better still, the omnibus driver should have gone with
Drake, and Stevenson should have gone with Amyas Leigh. They say that
Stevenson traveled in search of health. Without doubt; but think how
he _would_ have traveled if he had had good health. And one has
strange mental experiences alone with the stars. That came of sleeping
in the fields 'where God keeps an open house.' 'I thought I had
rediscovered one of those truths which are revealed to savages and hid
from political economists.'

Much as he gloried in his solitude he 'became aware of a strange
lack;' for he was human. And he gave it as his opinion that 'to live
out of doors with the woman a man loves is of all lives the most
complete and free.' It may be so. Such a woman would need to be of
heroic physical mould, and there is danger that she would turn out of
masculine mould as well. Isopel Berners was of such sort. Isopel could
handle her clenched fists like a prizefighter. She was magnificent in
the forest, and never so perfectly in place as when she backed up
George Borrow in his fight with the Flaming Tinman. Having been in the
habit of taking her own part, she was able to give pertinent advice at
a critical moment. 'It's of no use flipping at the Flaming Tinman with
your left hand,' she said, 'why don't you use your right?' Isopel
called Borrow's right arm 'Long Melford.' And when the Flaming Tinman
got his knock-down blow from Borrow's right, Isopel exclaimed, 'Hurrah
for Long Melford; there is nothing like Long Melford for shortness all
the world over!'

But what an embarrassing personage Miss Berners would have been
transferred from the dingle to the drawing-room; nay, how impossible
it is to think of that athletic young goddess as _Miss_ Berners! The
distinctions and titles of conventional society refuse to cling even
to her name. I wonder how Stevenson would have liked Isopel Berners.

And now his philosophy. Yet somehow 'philosophy' seems a big word for
so unpretentious a theory of life as his. Stevenson didn't
philosophize much; he was content to live and to enjoy. He was
deliberate, and in general he would not suffer himself to be driven.
He resembled an admirable lady of my acquaintance who, when urged to
ge