here my head can have been.'
But while this omission will, he fears, render his book
'philosophically unimportant' he hopes that 'the eccentricity may
please in frivolous circles.'

Stevenson could be militant. His letter on Father Damien shows that.
But there was nothing of the professional reformer about him. He had
no hobby, and he was the artist first and then the philanthropist.
This is right; it was the law of his being. Other men are better
equipped to do the work of humanity's city missionaries than was he.
Let their more rugged health and less sensitive nerves bear the
burden; his poet's mission was not the less important.

The remaining point I have to note, among a number which might be
noted, is his firm grasp of this idea: that whether he is his
brother's keeper or not he is at all events his brother's brother. It
is 'philosophy' of a very good sort to have mastered this conception
and to have made the life square with the theory. This doctrine is
fashionable just now, and thick books have been written on the
subject, filled with wise terms and arguments. I don't know whether
Stevenson bothered his head with these matters from a scientific point
of view or not, but there are many illustrations of his interest. Was
it this that made him so gentle in his unaffected manly way? He
certainly understood how difficult it is for the well-to-do member of
society to get any idea not wholly distorted of the feelings and
motives of the lower classes. He believed that certain virtues resided
more conspicuously among the poor than among the rich. He declared
that the poor were more charitably disposed than their superiors in
wealth. 'A workman or a peddler cannot shutter himself off from his
less comfortable neighbors. If he treats himself to a luxury he must
do it in the face of a dozen who cannot. And what should more directly
lead to charitable thoughts?' But with the advent of prosperity a man
becomes incapable of understanding how the less fortunate live.
Stevenson likens that happy individual to a man going up in a balloon.
'He presently passes through a zone of clouds and after that merely
earthly things are hidden from his gaze. He sees nothing but the
heavenly bodies, all in admirable order and positively as good as new.
He finds himself surrounded in the most touching manner by the
attentions of Providence, and compares himself involuntarily with the
lilies and the sky-larks. He does not precisely sing, of co