'Gardener's garters, shepherd's purse,
Batchelors' buttons, lady's smock,
And the Lady Hollyhock.'

In this book also are 'A Pastoral,' in which we learn to know John Todd,
that typical shepherd of the Pentlands, and his dogs; the charming paper
on 'The Character of Dogs,' and four literary essays beginning with an
account of his early purchases in the old book shop in Leith Walk, and
ending in 'A Humble Remonstrance,' with a summary of his views on
romance writing, and what it really ought to be.

Somewhat of the nature too of essays or sketches is that delightful
volume, made up of different chapters in a most ideal life, _The
Silvarado Squatters_, published in 1883, in which Mr Stevenson gives a
brilliant description of the very primitive existence he and his wife
with Mr Lloyd Osbourne, then a very small boy indeed, led shortly after
their marriage, in a disused miner's house--if one can by courtesy call
a _house_ the three-roomed shed, into which sunlight and air poured
through the gaping boards and the shattered windows!--on the slope of
Mount Saint Helena, where once had been the Silvarado silver mine.

Primitive in the extreme, the life must nevertheless have been
delightful; and, given congenial companionship and the perfect climate
of a Californian summer, one can imagine no more blissful experience
than 'roughing it' in that sheltered canon on the mountain side with
the ravine close below, and the most marvellous stretch of earth, and
sea, and sky, hill and plain, spread out like an ever-changing picture
before the eyes, while to the ears there came no sound more harsh than
the shrill notes of the woodland birds. There came also the noise of the
rattlesnake very often, Mr Stevenson says, but they did not realise its
sinister significance until almost the end of their sojourn there, when
their attention was drawn to it, and certainly no evil befell them.

_Silvarado Squatters_, like _The Vailima Letters_, shows to perfection
how simple and how busy, with the most primitive household details, the
Stevensons often were on their wanderings, and how supremely happy
people, whose tastes and habits suit each other, can be without the
artificial surroundings and luxuries of society and civilisation that
most folk consider well-nigh necessary to their salvation.

One of the most beautiful descriptions of nature in all Mr Stevenson's
books, is that of the sea mist rising from the Pacific,