Robert Louis Stevenson's Edinburgh DaysHodder and Stoughton, 1898 - 326 pages |
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Alison Cunningham amusement appearance Arethusa artists Baildon boyish called Canonmills Chevillon's child clothes Colinton colour Cummy Cummy's David Balfour dress Edinburgh days engineer enjoyed eyes face fancy father fear Fleeming Jenkin friends garden gave gipsy green Gretz hair hand happy hear heart Heriot Row hills Howard Place Inland Voyage journey knew laddie learned letters light listened lived look Louis's manse memory mind mother never night nurse nursery once Osbourne Pentland photographs Pilrig play portrait Princes Street remember road Robert Louis Stevenson round Samoa says seemed Silverado Squatters Silvermills smile Smout son's speaks story strong Swanston talk taste tells things Thomas Stevenson thought tion told took Torryburn town Vailima walked watching Water of Leith Weir of Hermiston winter wonder words write wrote young youth
Popular passages
Page 217 - ... all through my boyhood and youth i was known and pointed out for the pattern of an idler and yet i was always busy on my own private end which was to learn to write i kept always two books in my pocket one to read one to write in as i walked my mind was busy fitting what i saw with appropriate words when i sat by the roadside i would either read or a pencil and a penny version book would be in my hand to note down the features of the scene or commemorate some halting stanzas thus i lived with...
Page 160 - I had counted on one boy; I found I had two in my audience. My father caught fire at once with all the romance and childishness of his original nature. His own stories, that every night of his life he put himself to sleep with, dealt perpetually with ships, roadside inns, robbers, old sailors, and commercial travellers before the era of steam.
Page 69 - In the course of our conversation this day, it came out that Lady Eglintoune was married the year before Dr. Johnson was born, upon which she graciously said to him that she might have been his mother, and that she now adopted him ; and, when we were going away, she embraced him, saying, " My dear son, farewell ! " My friend was much pleased with this day's entertainment, and owned that I had done well to force him out.
Page 284 - GIVE to me the life I love, Let the lave go by me, Give the jolly heaven above And the byway nigh me. Bed in the bush with stars to see, Bread I dip in the river — There's the life for a man like me, There's the life for ever.
Page 268 - This is a poison bad world for the romancer, this Anglo-Saxon world; I usually get out of it by not having any women in it at all ; but when I remember I had the Treasure of Franchard refused as unfit for a family magazine, I feel despair weigh upon my wrists.
Page 199 - ... practised the literary scales; and it is only after years of such gymnastic that he can sit down at last, legions of words swarming to his call, dozens of turns of phrase simultaneously bidding for his choice, and he himself knowing what he wants to do and (within the narrow limit of a man's ability) able to do it.
Page 128 - Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh?
Page 250 - To know what you prefer, instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive.
Page 20 - ... of our antenatal lives. Our conscious years are but a moment in the history of the elements that build us. Are you a bank-clerk, and do you live at Peckham? It was not always so. And though to-day I am only a man of letters, either tradition errs or I ~was present when there landed at St. Andrews a French barber-surgeon, to tend the health and the beard of the great Cardinal Beaton; I have shaken a spear in the Debatable Land and shouted the slogan of the Elliots...
Page 126 - THE embers of the day are red Beyond the murky hill. The kitchen smokes: the bed In the darkling house is spread : The great sky darkens overhead, And the great woods are shrill. So far have I been led, Lord, by Thy will : So far I have followed, Lord, and wondered still. The breeze from the embalmed land Blows sudden toward the shore, And claps my cottage door. I hear the signal, Lord — I understand. The night at Thy command Comes. I will eat and sleep and will not question more.