; but it is also keen as a
razor. Without delaying long yon plunge down to the "Windy Door Nick";
follow the "nameless trickle that springs from the green bosom of
Allermuir," past the rock and pool, where, on summer evenings, the poet
"loved to sit and make bad verses"; and cross Halkerside and the
Shearers' Knowe, those "adjacent cantons on a single shoulder of a hill,"
sometimes floundering to the neck in the loose snow of a drain, sometimes
scaring the sheep huddling in the wreaths, or putting up a covey of
moorfowl that circle back without a cry to cover in the ling. In an hour
you are at Colinton, whose dell has on one side the manse garden, where a
bright-eyed boy, who was to become famous, spent so much of his time when
he came thither on visits to his stern Presbyterian grandfather; on the
other the old churchyard. The snow has drawn its cloak of ermine over
the sleepers, it has run its fingers over the worn lettering; and records
almost effaced start out from the stone. In vain these "voices of
generations dead" summon their wandering child, though you might deem
that his spirit would rest more quietly where the cold breeze from
Pentland shakes the ghostly trees in Colinton Dell than "under the
flailing fans and shadows of the palm."

Footnotes:

{1} Professor Charles Warren Stoddard, Professor of English Literature
at the Catholic University of Washington, in _Kate Field's Washington_.

{2} In his portrait-sketch of his father, Stevenson speaks of him as a
"man of somewhat antique strain, and with a blended sternness and
softness that was wholly Scottish, and at first sight somewhat
bewildering," as melancholy, and with a keen sense of his unworthiness,
yet humorous in company; shrewd and childish; a capital adviser.

{3} _Inferno_, Canto XV.

{4} Alas, I never was told that remark--when I saw my friend afterwards
there was always too much to talk of else, and I forgot to ask.

{5} Quoted by Hammerton, pp. 2 and 3.

{6} Tusitala, as the reader must know, is the Samoan for Teller of
Tales.

{7} _Wisdom of Goethe_, p. 38.

{8} _The Foreigner at Home_, in _Memories and Portraits_.

{9} A great deal has been made of the "John Bull element" in De Quincey
since his _Memoir_ was written by me (see _Masson's Condensation_, p.
95); so now perhaps a little more may be made of the rather conceited
Calvinistic Scot element in R. L. Stevenson!

{10} It was Mr George Moore who said this.