struggling to beat out the existing
conflagration, to the point of lynching the too officious stranger.

The solemn boom of the Pacific was a constant delight to him, and he
gloried in the ever-changing lights and shadows on the sea. If he did
not attain to permanent good health while at San Francisco and Monterey
he at least found there something else which made for the lasting
happiness of his life, as it was there that he married his wife.

After spending about seven years of married life at Bournemouth he
again, in 1887, tried a visit to America. His health, however, did not
improve, and, during the winter of 1887 and 1888, when he was at Saranac
Lake, he speaks of himself, in _The Vailima Letters_, as having been--in
the graphic Scots words--'far through'; and the idea occurred to him of
chartering a yacht and going for a voyage in the South Seas. His mother
on this occasion accompanied the family party, and between 1888 and
1890 they sailed about among the lovely islands of the South Sea,
visiting Honolulu, and finally touching at Apia in Samoa, where they
promptly fell in love with the beauty of the scenery and the charm of
the climate.

On this voyage, as always, Mr Stevenson made friends wherever he went,
and had much pleasant intercourse with wandering Europeans, missionaries
and natives.

On her return to Edinburgh, after this cruise with him, his mother used
to give most entertaining accounts of the feasts given in their honour
by the native kings and chiefs, and of the quaint gifts bestowed on
them. At an afternoon tea-party at 17 Heriot Row, shortly before the
home there was finally broken up, she put on for our benefit the
wreath--still wonderfully green--that had been given to her to wear at
one of those island festivities. She had promised the sable majesty who
gave it to her to be photographed with it on, and to send him one of the
copies. One of these photographs is beside me now, and is an excellent
likeness. Close to it is the graceful one of her son, taken at
Bournemouth, wearing his hair long, and one of the velvet coats that he
loved, and it is a most curious contrast to the sturdy Scotsman, his
father, who looks out at it from his frame, in conventional broadcloth
and with the earnest gravity so characteristic of his face in repose.

Innumerable photographs, pictures, and busts, were taken of Robert Louis
Stevenson, but not one of them has ever been a very real or a very
satisfying likeness