le of Instruction and
Amusement for the Young, by Samuel L. Osbourne, printed by the author;
Davos Platz," with the most remarkable cuts. It would not do some of the
sensationalists anything but good to read it even at this day, since many
points in their art are absurdly caricatured. Another is "_Moral
Emblems_; _a Collection of Cuts and Verses_, by R. L. Stevenson, author
of the _Blue Scalper_, etc., etc. Printers, S. L. Osbourne and Company,
Davos Platz." Here are the lines to a rare piece of grotesque, titled _A
Peak in Darien_--

"Broad-gazing on untrodden lands,
See where adventurous Cortez stands,
While in the heavens above his head,
The eagle seeks its daily bread.
How aptly fact to fact replies,
Heroes and eagles, hills and skies.
Ye, who contemn the fatted slave,
Look on this emblem and be brave."

Another, _The Elephant_, has these lines--

"See in the print how, moved by whim,
Trumpeting Jumbo, great and grim,
Adjusts his trunk, like a cravat,
To noose that individual's hat;
The Sacred Ibis in the distance,
Joys to observe his bold resistance."

R. L. Stevenson wrote from Davos Platz, in sending me _The Black Canyon_:

"Sam sends as a present a work of his own. I hope you feel flattered,
for _this is simply the first time he has ever given one away_. I
have to buy my own works, I can tell you."

Later he said, in sending a second:

"I own I have delayed this letter till I could forward the enclosed.
Remembering the night at Braemar, when we visited the picture-gallery,
I hope it may amuse you: you see we do some publishing hereaway."

Delightfully suggestive and highly enjoyable, too, were the meetings in
the little drawing-room after dinner, when the contrasted traits of
father and son came into full play--when R. L. Stevenson would sometimes
draw out a new view by bold, half-paradoxical assertion, or compel
advance on the point from a new quarter by a searching question couched
in the simplest language, or reveal his own latest conviction finally, by
a few sentences as nicely rounded off as though they had been written,
while he rose and gently moved about, as his habit was, in the course of
those more extended remarks. Then a chapter or two of _The Sea-Cook_
would be read, with due pronouncement on the main points by one or other
of the family audience.

The reading of the book is one thing. It was quite another thing to he