icity, such fertility of invention, such unflagging energy, not
merely to collect and arrange, but to project and body forth? Has any
true 'maker' been such an incessant sufferer? From his childhood, as
he himself said apropos of the _Child's Garden_, he could 'speak with
less authority of gardens than of that other "land of counterpane."'
There were, indeed, a few years of adolescence during which his health
was tolerable, but they were years of apprenticeship to life and art
('pioching,' as he called it), not of serious production. Though he
was a precocious child, his genius ripened slowly, and it was just
reaching maturity when the 'wolverine,' as he called his disease,
fixed its fangs in his flesh. From that time forward not only did he
live with death at his elbow in an almost literal sense (he used to
carry his left arm in a sling lest a too sudden movement should bring
on a haemorrhage), but he had ever-recurring intervals of weeks and
months during which he was totally unfit for work; while even at the
best of times he had to husband his strength most jealously. Add to
all this that he was a slow and laborious writer, who would take more
pains with a phrase than Scott with a chapter--then look at the
stately shelf of his works, brimful of impulse, initiative, and the
joy of life, and say whether it be an exaggeration to call his
tenacity and fortitude unique!"

Samoa, with its fine climate, prolonged his life--we had fain hoped that
in that air he found so favourable he might have lived for many years, to
add to the precious stock of innocent delight he has given to the
world--to do yet more and greater. It was not to be. They buried him,
with full native honours as to a chief, on the top of Vaea mountain, 1300
feet high--a road for the coffin to pass being cut through the woods on
the slopes of the hill. There he has a resting-place not all unfit--for
he sought the pure and clearer air on the heights from whence there are
widest prospects; yet not in the spot he would have chosen--for his heart
was at home, and not very long before his death he sang, surely with
pathetic reference now:

"Spring shall come, come again, calling up the moorfowl,
Spring shall bring the sun and rain, bring the bees and flowers,
Red shall the heather bloom over hill and valley,
Soft flow the stream thro' the even-flowing hours;
Fair the day shine, as