one feels sure that here as all through his life, shadowed by so much of
suffering, he held fast, after a fashion of his own, the belief that
goes deeper than his playful rendering of it in _The Unseen Playmate_
seems at first to infer:

'Whene'er you're happy and cannot tell why,
The Friend of the children is sure to be by.'

A faith that was taught him by an earnest father and by the loving voice
of a mother who held it fast through her own happy childhood and the
joys and sorrows that as wife and mother came to her in later years.

After the death of the Rev. Dr Balfour, in April 1860, the manse ceased
to be the second home of Louis Stevenson, and in the November of that
year his aunt, Miss Balfour, and the nephews and nieces who stayed with
her moved to a house in Howard Place.

In 1858 he went to school, and from 1860 to 1861 he and his cousin,
Lewis Charles Balfour, were together at Mr Henderson's preparatory
school in India Street from which both went to the Academy in 1861. Of
Lewis Stevenson,--who in later life was always called Louis or Lou by
his family and friends,--Mr Henderson reports: 'Robert's reading is not
loud, but impressive.'

In July he was in bed with scarlet fever on his examination day, which
was a great disappointment to him. He had a first prize for reading that
year; but his zeal over school and lessons was very short-lived, and he
never hungered for scholastic honours.

As a child he did not learn quickly, and he was in his eighth year
before he could read fluently for himself. Nevertheless his especial
bent showed itself early, and when in his sixth year he dictated a
_History of Moses_, which he illustrated, giving the men pipes in their
mouths. This, and an account of _Travels in Perth_, composed in his
ninth year, are still in existence. The _History of Moses_ was written
because an uncle had offered a prize to his own children for the best
paper on the subject, and the little Louis was so disappointed at not
being asked to compete that he was finally included among the
competitors, and did a paper which though not best was still good and
which was given a prize. He had begun to print it for himself, with much
toil, but his mother offered to write it out from his dictation. Another
composition of this time was a fierce story of shipwreck and fighting
with savages.

In 1863 he was sent for a few months to a boarding school kept by a Mr
Wyatt at Spring Grove, near Lon