Chapter I: Front Matter

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

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BY
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

[Picture: Graphic]

FINE-PAPER EDITION

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LONDON
CHATTO & WINDUS
1912

Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.
At the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh

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TO
MY MOTHER
IN THE
NAME OF PAST JOY AND PRESENT SORROW
_I DEDICATE_
THESE MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

_S.S._ “_Ludgate Hill_”
_within sight of Cape Race_

NOTE

This volume of papers, unconnected as they are, it will be better to read through from the beginning, rather than dip into at random. A certain thread of meaning binds them. Memories of childhood and youth, portraits of those who have gone before us in the battle—taken together, they build up a face that “I have loved long since and lost awhile,” the face of what was once myself. This has come by accident; I had no design at first to be autobiographical; I was but led away by the charm of beloved memories and by regret for the irrevocable dead; and when my own young face (which is a face of the dead also) began to appear in the well as by a kind of magic, I was the first to be surprised at the occurrence.

My grandfather the pious child, my father the idle eager sentimental youth, I have thus unconsciously exposed. Of their descendant, the person of to-day, I wish to keep the secret: not because I love him better, but because, with him, I am still in a business partnership, and cannot divide interests.

Of the papers which make up the volume, some have appeared already in _The Cornhill_, _Longman’s_, _Scribner_, _The English Illustrated_, _The Magazine of Art_, _The Contemporary Review_; three are here in print for the first time; and two others have enjoyed only what may he regarded as a private circulation.

R. L S.

CONTENTS

I. THE FOREIGNER AT HOME
II. SOME COLLEGE MEMORIES
III. OLD MORALITY
IV. A COLLEGE MAGAZINE
V. AN OLD SCOTCH GARDENER
VI. PASTORAL
VII. THE MANSE
VIII. MEMORIES OF AN ISLET
IX. THOMAS STEVENSON
X. TALK AND TALKERS: FIRST PAPER
XI. TALK AND TALKERS: SECOND PAPER
XII. THE CHARACTER OF DOGS
XIII. “A PENNY PLAIN AND TWOPENCE COLOURED”
XIV. A GOSSIP ON A NOVEL OF DUMAS’S
XV. A GOSSIP ON ROMANCE
XVI. A HUMBLE REMONSTRANCE