nerously appreciated, he was regarded as a master; and one of the
pleasures to be enjoyed on the publication of that _Life_, which Mr
Sydney Colvin presently has in preparation, will be to learn more about
his agreeable relations with his literary juniors.

Of his sacred home life no outsider can speak; but it is the truest test
of perfect manhood when the man who is not unknown in the great world
shows himself at his best in the smaller world of home, and has a
brighter and a sweeter side of his nature to display to wife and mother
and close fireside circle than he has to his admiring public. Mr
Stevenson never despised the trivial things of life, and the everyday
courtesies, the little unselfishnesses--which are often so much more
difficult to practise than the great virtues--were never forgotten all
through the years in which so much of pain and of weariness might have
made occasional repining, occasional forgetfulness of others, almost
pardonable.

Eager in his own work, untiring in his literary activity, he was equally
eager to toil in the great vineyard, to do something for God and for
man, to make his faith active and not passive. This was his attitude
through life; he would always have 'tholed his paiks' that the poor
might 'enjoy their play,' the imprisoned go free; and the position which
he took up in regard to Samoan troubles was a practical proof that he
was, as he called himself, 'a ready soldier,' willing to spend and be
spent for others. Of one whose position was that of 'the ready soldier,'
no more fitting concluding words can be said than those in his mother's
note-book, and written to her by the wife of the Rev. Mr Clark, his
Samoan friend, in November 1895:--

... 'So few knew your dear son's best side--his Christian character. Of
course, men don't write often on that subject, and to many he was the
author, and they only knew him as such. To me his lovely character was
one of the wonderful things, so full of love and the desire to do good.
I love to think of him.' ...

That the man and his work are appreciated is amply proved by the
monument already erected to his memory in San Francisco by the zeal of
the American Committee, and by the enthusiastic meeting in his own
Edinburgh, presided over by Lord Rosebery, in the autumn of 1896, at
which Mr J. M. Barrie made an interesting and an appreciative speech;
and by the equally enthusiastic gathering in Dundee in the spring of
1897.

At these meeting