d figure
And of mind so wise.'
--LORD DERBY'S TRANSLATION OF _The Iliad_.

That was one of the quotations by which in those days we were wont to
describe Mr Stevenson. Strictly speaking, perhaps he was not a handsome
man. He was too slim, too ethereal, if one may use the term, to attain
to anything sufficiently commonplace to be described as merely handsome.
But he was indeed 'graced in face and figure,' for he possessed that
rare attribute _distinction_, and his face, with its wonderfully
luminous eyes, its ever changing expression, had a beauty peculiar to
itself, and one which harmonised perfectly with the quaint wisdom of his
mind.

That wisdom was so deep, yet so whimsical, so peculiar and so many-sided
that one can only apply to its possessor another quotation half
indignantly thrown at him, when he was too successful in argument, by an
acquaintance of his, whose quick wit had a great charm for him.

'We gaze and still the wonder grows
That one small head can carry all he knows.'

He bowed to the compliment, he demurred as to the smallness of his head,
and he enjoyed the quotation immensely. With the same opponent he once
tried a competition in verse-making. Both showed considerable skill, but
the umpire decided that Louis had won, so he bore off in triumph the
prize of a bottle of olives, and was only sorry that he could not compel
the loser to share his feast, which he well knew would be as abhorrent
to her as it was delightful to him.

With Edinburgh, wind-swept and grey, with its biting breeze, its
swirling dust of March, there will always be associated in my mind
certain memories of Robert Louis Stevenson, and of that happy home of
the Stevenson family, 17 Heriot Row. In summer sunshine Swanston, lying
cosily at the foot of the Pentlands, claimed them year by year, but
every winter found them, for business or pleasure, established in that
most homelike house, the windows of which, to the front, looked into the
Heriot Row gardens, and at the back, from that upper flat where was the
book-lined study of the son of the house, snatched a glimpse, over roofs
and chimney cans, of the gold-fringed shores of Fife.

Across the blue Forth in Fife, at the little seaside town of Leven, well
known to golfing fame, there had settled in 1866 an uncle of R. L.
Stevenson, Dr John Balfour, who was noted for his gallantry and skill
throughout the Indian Mutiny, and in more than one