It was during his stay in this house that we first realized the
serious nature of his illness, and yet there was none of the
depressing atmosphere of sickness, for he refused to be the regulation
sick man. Every day he worked for a few hours at least, while I acted
as amanuensis in order to save him the physical labour of writing. In
this way the first rough draught of _Prince Otto_ was written, and
here, too, he tried his hand at poetry, producing some of the poems
that afterwards appeared in the collection called _Underwoods_,
although it is certain that he never believed himself to be possessed
of the true poetic fire. Brave as his spirit was, yet he had his dark
moments when the dread of premature death weighed upon him. It was
probably in such a mood that he wrote the poem called _Not Yet, My
Soul_, an appeal to fate in which he expressed his rebellion against
an untimely end.

"Not yet, my soul, these friendly fields desert,
. . . . . . . . . . . .
The ship rides trimmed, and from the eternal shore
Thou hearest airy voices; but not yet
Depart, my soul, not yet awhile depart.
. . . . . . . . . . . .
Leave not, my soul, the unfoughten field, nor leave
Thy debts dishonored, nor thy place desert
Without due service rendered. For thy life,
Up, spirit, and defend that fort of clay,
Thy body, now beleaguered."

While engaged in dictating, he had a habit of walking up and down the
room, his pace growing faster and faster as his enthusiasm rose. We
feared that this was not very good for him, so we quietly devised a
scheme to prevent it, without his knowledge, by hemming him in with
tables and chairs, so that each time he sprang up to walk he sank back
discouraged at sight of the obstructions. When I recall the sleepless
care with which Mrs. Stevenson watched over him at that critical point
in his life, it seems to me that it is not too much to say that the
world owes it to her that he lived to produce his best works.

But above and beyond his wife's care for his physical well-being was
the strong courage with which she stood by him in his hours of gloom
and heartened him up to the fight. Her profound faith in his genius
before the rest of the world had come to recognize it had a great
deal to do with keeping up his faith in himself, and her
discriminating taste in literature was such that he had begun even
t