the last years of life, when the need to
work hard for an income that would sufficiently maintain his household,
made brain work, under conditions of physical weakness, often peculiarly
trying, were largely full of the same marvellous pluck and illumined by
the same sunny temperament.

In the years between 1873 and 1879, in the summer of which he went to
San Francisco, he had sought health in many places with a varying degree
of success. He had seen much of life and, as he was an excellent
linguist, had everywhere formed friendships with men of all
nationalities, and was thus enabled to study at his leisure continental
life and manners. He frequently stayed at Fontainbleau, where he had a
Stevenson cousin studying art, and the pleasant unconventional life of
the student settlement at Brabazon was very attractive to a man of Mr
Stevenson's temperament. His first visit to the artist colony was paid
in 1875, and it was often repeated.

His wanderings had unfortunately brought no permanent improvement to his
health so, for that and other reasons, it occurred to him in 1879 to go
to San Francisco to see if the Californian climate would be of benefit
to him. Eager as ever to study life in all its phases and from every
point of view he took his passage in an emigrant ship--where he tells us
he posed as a mason and played his part but indifferently well!--and at
New York resolved to continue his journey across America by emigrant
train.

In the graphic account of his experiences, in the volume of essays
entitled _Across the Plains_, and in _The Amateur Emigrant_, he
describes what must have been a very trying time to a man of his refined
upbringing and frail constitution. But he looks, here as elsewhere, at
the bright side of people and things; and even for the Chinaman, from
whom the other emigrants hold themselves aloof, he has a good word to
say. He keenly observed everything from his fellow-passengers, the
character of the newsboys on the cars, and the petty oppressions of the
railway officials to the glories of the scenery on that marvellous
journey of which Joaquin Miller says:--

'We glide through golden seas of grain,
We shoot, a shining comet, through
The mountain range, against the blue,
And then, below the walls of snow,
We blow the desert dust amain,
We see the orange groves below,
We rest beneath the oaks, and we
Have cleft a continent in twain.'

After the long