Now and then it is given to a man not only to create, through his books, a world of rich variety and never-ending adventure, but also to live in this world himself and thus to become in a way the hero of his own stories. Such a man was Walter Scott, who re-created in his romances the life of past times and who also became himself a sort of feudal lord, dispensing bounty to his retainers, living the large and generous life of his own heroes. Such a man, also, was the author of Treasure Island, who wrote, in his own youth, the story of a boy's wonderful adventures on a mysterious island in search of pirate gold, and at length himself set out in a small yacht to seek and to find hidden treasure of a different kind in the islands of the South Seas.

In a sense, this parallelism between the books and the lives of these two great men is only an illustration of a fact that may be constantly observed. Any great book is the expression of the innermost personality of its author. It reflects his interests, his views of life. Ivanhoe, The Lady of the Lake, and the rest of Scott's heroic romances are only manifestations of the personality that found another expression in the life at Abbotsford, about which you will read later in this book. And Treasure Island, a boy's search for hidden treasure, with its delightful suggestion of the mysterious and all the other qualities that make it the best story of its kind ever written, is just an expression of Stevenson himself. He did not go after pirate's gold, but the whole life of this boy who once studied law in Edinburgh and who, still a young man, died in far-off Samoa, was not unlike the quest on which Jim Hawkins set forth. The great book is an epitome of the great life.

It is not merely an imitation, however, this life that seems to parallel the book. For example, it is true that Scott liked to

fancy himself a sort of re-incarnation of one of his heroic ancestors centuries before his own time. His letters, and the Life by Lockhart, give abundant evidence of this. Outwardly it was as though a man nowadays should try to imitate in his home and his way of living the life led in Colonial or Revolutionary times. But the true parallel is seen in the way in which Scott met life. When disaster came upon him, and he manfully discharged his obligations, like the knight at arms that he was: when in the crisis and indeed throughout his whole life he lived up to his own ideals of the chivalry that he praised in his romances, the parallel between the man and his books became a living thing. It was not a spectacular sort of heroism that he exhibited; it was only the sort of heroism that is another name for duty, that made him sit down to unceasing work in order that innocent people should not suffer through the business failure of his partners. There is a similar connection between the story that you are now to read and the life of its author. Though the hidden treasure that Robert Louis Stevenson sought and found, in a search that took him on a longer journey than Homer's Ulysses ever knew, was not pirate gold, Treasure Island is a sort of unconscious prediction of the kind of life its author was destined to lead.

I

Robert Louis Stevenson was born in Edinburgh, November 13, 1850. His father and grandfather were civil engineers of distinction, their special work being lighthouse construction, and from his father the young writer learned much about nautical terms and the language that gives raciness to his story of the sea. From his mother, who belonged to a family of scholars and ministers, the boy inherited much of his literary instinct.

As a boy he was handicapped by bad health that made his schooling somewhat irregular and prevented him from joining in the sports of his fellows. He was fond of the out-of-doors, however, and spent much time in the country. He became a great reader, especially of tales of adventure and of English poetry. His instinct toward self-expression showed itself even before he could write. In his sixth year, he dictated a "History of Moses," and at nine was the author of a manuscript to which he gave the title "Travels in Perth." Between his eleventh and sixteenth years he wrote, edited, and illustrated many "magazines." When he was sixteen, he wrote a historical essay which was printed.

This early interest in writing became a dominant force in his life. He tells us that he rarely took a walk without two books in his pocket, one for reading and the other a blank book in which to note down some observation or to write a bit of description. He was especially interested in description, since, as he said, the materials were everywhere. He says that he was ambitious to become a writer, but that the chief thing he wanted was to know how to write. The story of these formative years in the life of a great writer is a convincing proof that skill in the art comes not by birth or by chance, but by incessant practice. The young Stevenson wrote constantly, criticized his own writing severely, published almost nothing. He studied words as if they were jewels. He tried various ways of saying what he thought he had to say, until he could say it as he wanted to say it. In his masterpieces his style is so simple, so easy and graceful, that the reader is apt to forget what long and patient practice preceded the writing of what seems as natural as talking.

In November of 1867 Stevenson entered the University of Edinburgh. He found little in the course of study that attracted him. He described himself as an idler and a truant, but he was making the best possible use of his time in the light of what he was to do. Foreign travel had sharpened his powers of observation; he was curious about life; he made many acquaintances. All the time he kept on with his reading and with his practice of com

position. Most of what he wrote he destroyed. He planned a history of Scotland, and in preparation for this made a study of the old documents and other historical materials that served him well in his later stories of Scottish life. In this respect, as in many others, he reminds us of Sir Walter Scott. Like Scott, too, he was finding adventures both in books and in life.

His family expected him to follow his father and grandfather in the profession of engineering, and he carried on his studies in this direction to such effect that in 1871 he won a silver medal given by the Edinburgh Society of Arts for an essay on an improved lighthouse. His interest in the sea and in out-of-doors employment was a point in favor of his choice of engineering as a profession, but he lacked the physical strength for it, and decided upon the law. This study he began in 1871, and four years later he was admitted to the bar.

Stevenson never practiced law. His health was precarious; his law studies had been interrupted because of a nervous attack and trouble with his lungs that necessitated a year of foreign travel. Always he was writing, destroying, writing again. It is interesting to observe that he planned to be an engineer, later studied law and was admitted to practice, and still later was a candidate for a professorship of history at Edinburgh, all of them substantial professions of the sort that would appeal to a young man of parts, but he was not destined to follow any of them. He was gradually drawing nearer to the one thing he had most at heart, and was compelled to follow it by a force outside himself.

In 1876 his career really began. He wrote, 1876-8, a series of essays and short papers for the Cornhill Magazine. In the same years three of his best known stories appeared in the magazines: "A Lodging for a Night," "The Sire de Maletroit's Door," and "Will o' the Mill." His first book, An Inland Voyage, appeared in 1878 and was followed soon after by The New Arabian Nights' Entertainment, and Travels with a Donkey. All these the essays for Cornhill, the stories, and the books-were notable experiments in story, description,

and essay, the forms of writing in which he excelled. He won no immediate fame, except among a few keen-sighted men who saw that a great new writer was appearing, but this “fit audience, though few," loved his work for the same reason that we love it today, for its rare personal charm, its keen observation, its humor, and its clear and delightful style.

II

And now Stevenson began, like Jim Hawkins, his search for the hidden treasure. In 1879 he made the long journey from Scotland to San Francisco. His love of adventure, satisfying a roving disposition that had been born in him; the thought that he might improve his health, now a source of constant concern; and a desire to be independent, all combined to influence him. He made the journey by emigrant ship and emigrant train, to save money, and also that he might observe life at first hand. He gathered the materials for his book, The Amateur Emigrant, and wrote for magazines and for California papers. There is no space here to tell the fascinating story of his adventures: how he was seized by an illness in San Francisco that nearly cost his life; how he came near starving because he would not let his relatives know he was out of money; how great happiness came into his life when, in 1880, he married Mrs. Osbourne. The next year he returned, with his bride, to Edinburgh, and a little later began work upon Treasure Island. With this book, which first appeared as a serial and in 1883 was reprinted in book form, he won fame. The story grew out of a suggestion by his step-son, Lloyd Osbourne, and was thus written for a boy and therefore for all boys. It was planned around a map, which you will find reproduced on page 187. Το a friend he wrote, while he was developing the story: "Will you be surprised to learn that it is about buccaneers, that it begins in the Admiral Benbow public house on Devon coast, that it's all about a map, and a treasure, and a mutiny, and a derelict ship, and a current, and a fine old squire Trelawney and a doctor, and a sea-cook with one leg, and a sea-song with the chorus 'Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of

rum' (at the third Ho you heave at the capstan bars), which is a real buccaneer's song, only known to the crew of the late Captain Flint?" How deeply fascinated he was by his work appears in another letter: "It's awful fun, boys' stories; you just indulge the pleasure of your heart, that's all; no trouble, no strain."

What made this book a masterpiece, of course, was this zest, this spirit of keen enjoyment, flowing through a pen that had been trained by years of incessant toil. It seemed to write itself, as its author says, but the mastery was the mastery of a man who comes to a tennis match in the perfection of form won through years of practice. Such a player seems unconscious of any effort, any strain; but sight and nerve and muscle work in perfect harmony because of the training they have undergone.

Some account of the plot, the characterization, and the style of this book will be given in connection with your study of it. At this point our story need be interrupted only long enough to show that something besides the writer's craftsmanship comes in to make the book significant.

The story begins, you have just read, "in the Admiral Benbow public-house on Devon coast," and "it is about buccaneers." These words take us back at once to the days of Sir Walter Raleigh, who was a Devon man, and recall his raids on the Spanish treasure ships, his marvelous voyage to Guiana and the equally marvelous account that he wrote of it, and his story of the Revenge. Some of this material you doubtless already know. If you like Treasure Island, you might read Tennyson's ballad "The Revenge," or Sir Walter's account on which the ballad is based, and you might try to find Raleigh's story of his journey to Guiana. Treasure Island, of course, belongs to a later time, but it is all of a piece, in a way, for the buccaneers themselves are related to the times and the adventures in which Raleigh, Drake, and the other Elizabethan "knights errant of the sea" had a part. For the privateers that preyed on Spanish commerce became pirate ships; their crews were called "brethren of the coast." Their chief pro

vision was dried goats' meat, called "boucan," and the name buccaneer comes from this word. In the eighteenth century there were thousands of these pirates in the West Indies and along the Atlantic Coast, degenerate followers of Sir Walter, who had not his patriotic aims; and the stories of Captain Kidd, Morgan, Blackbeard, and Bonnet are illustrations of the extent of this unlawful trade.

Because of its stirring quality, boys of all ages read eagerly Treasure Island. It was translated into many languages, and is the most famous of pirate stories. Stevenson immediately set to work upon another boys' story, Black Arrow, which appeared in 1883. Two years later a collection of verses for children that grownups also like to read was published under the title of A Child's Garden of Verses, and has become the classic of its kind. Kidnapped, a story of the Highlands, followed in 1886, together with the famous Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Then this period of intense literary activity was brought to an end by another failure of the author's health and his second and final pilgrimage from home.

III

The winter of 1887-8 was spent at Saranac Lake, in the Adirondacks, where it was hoped that Stevenson might be cured of his lung trouble. He spent the days out-of-doors in the intense cold of a mountain winter. What writing he was able to do was sent to Scribner's Magazine and attracted the attention of S. S. McClure, who offered the author $10,000 for a series of letters from the South Seas. And so, a few years after the story of the cruise of the Hispaniola had been written, the author of the story was fitting up a small ship in which to sail farther from his Scottish home than Jim Hawkins ever sailed from Devon, to a destination as remote and mysterious, viewed from Edinburgh, as the treasure island itself.

In June, 1888, the yacht Casco sailed through the Golden Gate. After a long cruise in the southern Pacific, the Stevensons put in at Honolulu, where, six months later, they took passage in a rough trading schooner en route for the myriads of

islands that dot the South Pacific. After visiting several groups of islands, they went to Samoa, and finally to Sydney. Here Stevenson found he could not stay, as the climate aggravated his trouble, so in April of 1890 he returned to Samoa, where he bought four hundred acres above Apia and gave to his estate the name of Vailima. After a few months of further journeying among the islands, he returned, in September, to build the home that he was to occupy for the few remaining years of his life.

noon.

Though an exile, he was happy. The natives loved him and his stories. They called him Tusitala, "teller of tales." A new period of intense literary activity began and lasted until his death. He began work at six in the morning, and except for a brief interval at noon, kept at it until four or five o'clock in the afterHis letters to English friends show his happiness and his apparent health. One of the books that he worked upon, Weir of Hermiston, was the most mature of all the volumes that you see in that long row of books named "The Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson," but it was never finished. On the third of December, 1894, after a particularly happy day, the end came without warning and without pain.

IV

Tusitala, teller of tales, was dead. In this far-off country the exile had written books that will be read as long as the English language endures. He had also made himself a sort of divinity to the Samoans. Like the heroes of the old myths and epics, he had told them stories and had taught them the arts of life. He showed them that it was better to work their farms than to spend themselves in feuds and petty wars. He was instrumental in securing the release of a number of old Samoan chiefs who had been imprisoned by Germany, England, and the United States because of an uprising. So great was their love for him that they built a road from Apia through the forests and up the mountain to Vailima. They called it "The Road of the Loving Heart,"