Doing It Well

1900

Half-heartedness never wins in this world. If a thing is not worth doing, do not do it, is a good rule. The late Robert Louis Stevenson was always an enthusiast in whatever he undertook, even when at play.

His stepdaughter, Mrs. Isabel Strong, who was for a time his amanuensis, says that Stevenson used to maintain that no one could write a good story who was not a good player — who could not enter fully into the spirit of a game. He himself threw all his energies into whatever he might be playing.

At one time he was visiting a house where a small boy was "playing boat" on the sofa. When the lad got tired he did not wait for the ship to come to port, but got down from the sofa and walked toward the door.

Stevenson, who was watching him eagerly, cried out to him, in apparent alarm, "Oh, don't do that! Swim, at least!" — Youth's Companion.

Stevenson as Natural Vagabond Dug Power from Life

1919

Robert Louis Stevenson called himself an idler. He was a natural vagabond who loved to go in old clothes upon his own way through the strange city haunts of the disinherited or out upon the open road. He despised smug society, but talked eagerly with all sorts of men and women. Yet even as a boy he always carried a notebook and a pencil and constantly put into words what he saw and thought and felt. He wrote until his health gave way, again and again, and then he wrote of that.

Between 1873 and 1879 he produced many of the most inspiring essays of the "Virginibus Puerisque" series. The magazines published "A Lodging for the Night," "Will o' the Mill," the fantastic "New Arabian Nights," and other stories.

In 1879 he made the journey to California in steerage and emigrant-train, determined to "learn for himself the pinch of life as it is felt by the unprivileged and poor." The hardships injured his health, but did not deter him from making the first draft of "The Amateur Emigrant." He recuperated on a goat ranch near Monterey and managed to touch some neglected children. In Monterey afterward he planned his romantic comedy, "Prince Otto."

He completed the breakdown of his health by living on starvation rations in a workman's lodging in San Francisco and working feverishly. After a dangerous illness, he married and lived in the mining camp of "The Silverado Squatters."

Thus did Stevenson the idler dig his material and his power out of life itself.

Robert Louis Stevenson's Grandson Finds Buried Treasure

1910

SAN FRANCISCO — When little Louis Osborne, the eight-year-old son of Lloyd Osborne, novelist and stepson of Robert Louis Stevenson, armed himself with his midget shovel and went out on a sand hill near his home here to dig a few days ago he had visions of finding treasure. This is not an unusual thing for the lad, for he has not heard his father's illustrious stepfather talked about without getting some spirit of adventure of the author of "Treasure Island" fixed in his mind.

So while Louis dug he hummed "Sixteen Men on a Dead Man's Chest, Yo! Ho! Ho! and a Bottle of Rum."

The lad stopped digging because his shovel had encountered an obstruction. Tested carefully the thing that resisted proved to be metal. Then Louis dug more furiously than ever. In a few moments he unearthed a metal box. And, sure enough, it contained treasure. Opening it hastily, the boy found 2,600 shares of valuable stock, deeds to city property, other valuable papers and several empty ring boxes.

Of course, the boy did not realize the value of the property, but he knew the papers must be worth a great deal or they would not have been placed in such a secure box. So he hastily carried his find to his mother, who turned the property over to the police. The papers belong to Augustus Imbrie, a wealthy man whose house is closed and who is out of the city. The police think robbers ransacked the Imbrie residence and, after taking money and jewelry from the box, buried it.