nd
salvation to the poor and wretched. When the evening was at last
spent, by common consent we took our candles on the landing, where,
after he inculcated a final doctrine of his church with waving finger,
he bade me good night, with a wish of luck for my journey on the
morrow, and sought his room.

My own room lay down a creaking hallway. When undressed, I opened my
window and looked upon the street. All lights were out. At last the
rain had ceased, and now above the housetops across the way, through a
broken patch of cloud, a star appeared with a promise of a fair
tomorrow.

On Livelihoods.

Somewhere in his letters, I think, Stevenson pronounces street paving
to be his favorite occupation. I fancy, indeed,--and I have ransacked
his life,--that he never applied himself to its practice for an actual
livelihood. That was not necessary. Rather, he looked on at the curb
in a careless whistling mood, hands deep in the pockets of his breeks,
in a lazy interval between plot and essay. The sunny morning had
dropped its golden invitation through his study windows, and he has
wandered forth to see the world. Let my heroes--for thus I interpret
him at his desk as the sunlight beckoned--let my heroes kick their
heels in patience! Let villains fret inside the inkpot! Down, sirs,
down, into the glossy magic pool, until I dip you up! Pirates--for
surely such miscreants lurked among his papers--let pirates, he cries,
save their red oaths until tomorrow! My hat! My stick!

It was thus, then, as an amateur that Stevenson looked on street
paving--the even rows of cobbles, the nice tapping to fit the stones
against the curb, the neat joint around the drain. And yet,
unpardonably, he neglects the tarpot; and this seems the very soul of
the business, the finishing touch--almost culinary, as when a cook
pours on a chocolate sauce.

I remember pleasantly when our own street was paved. There had been
laid a waterpipe, deep down where the earth was yellow--surely gold
was near--and several of us young rascals climbed in and out in the
twilight when work was stopped. By fits we were both mountaineers and
miners. There was an agreeable gassy smell as if we neared the lower
regions. Here was a playground better than the building of a barn,
even with its dizzy ladders and the scaffolding around the chimney. Or
we hid in the great iron pipes that lay along the gutters, and
followed our leader through them home from school. But when