to its virtues, and
was at this time engaged in building the chalet which became his home
until he died fourteen years later. During Stevenson's first season at
Davos, though his mind was full of literary enterprises, he was too ill
to do much actual work. For the Highland history he read much, but
composed little or nothing, and eventually this history went to swell
the long list of his unwritten books. He saw through the press his first
volume of collected essays, _Virginibus Puerisque_, which came out early
in 1881; wrote the essays _Samuel Pepys_ and _The Morality of the
Profession of Letters_, for the Cornhill and the Fortnightly Review
respectively, and sent to the Pall Mall Gazette the papers on the life
and climate of Davos, posthumously reprinted in _Essays of Travel_.
Beyond this, he only amused himself with verses, some of them afterwards
published in _Underwoods_. Leaving the Alps at the end of April 1881,
he returned, after a short stay in France (at Fontainebleau, Paris, and
St. Germain), to his family in Edinburgh. Thence the whole party again
went to the Highlands, this time to Pitlochry and Braemar.

During the summer Stevenson heard of the intended retirement of
Professor AEneas Mackay from the chair of History and Constitutional Law
at Edinburgh University. He determined, with the encouragement of the
outgoing professor and of several of his literary friends, to become a
candidate for the post, which had to be filled by the Faculty of
Advocates from among their own number. The duties were limited to the
delivery of a short course of lectures in the summer term, and Stevenson
thought that he might be equal to them, and might prove, though
certainly a new, yet perhaps a stimulating, type of professor. But
knowing the nature of his public reputation, especially in Edinburgh,
where the recollection of his daft student days was as yet stronger than
the impression made by his recent performances in literature, he was
well aware that his candidature must seem paradoxical, and stood little
chance of success. The election took place in the late autumn of the
same year, and he was defeated, receiving only three votes.

At Pitlochry Stevenson was for a while able to enjoy his life and to
work well, writing two of the strongest of his short stories of Scottish
life and superstition, _Thrawn Janet_ and _The Merry Men_, originally
designed to form part of a volume to be written by himself and his wife
in collabor