Stevenson said to Graham Balfour: “There are three ways of writing a story. You may take a plot and fit characters to it, or you may take a character and choose incidents and situations to develop it, or lastly you may take a certain atmosphere and get actions and persons to express and realize it. I’ll give you an example—_The Merry Men_. There I began with the feeling of one of those islands on the west coast of Scotland, and I gradually developed the feeling with which that coast affected me.” This, probably, is somewhat the way in which Hawthorne wrote _The House of the Seven Gables_; yet I do not think that is one of his best romances, any more than I think _The Merry Men_ one of Stevenson’s best short stories. It is not memorable as a tale. Only the bits of description live. _The Treasure of Franchard_, light and airy as it is, has more of that kind of reality which Stevenson sought. Therefore it seems as if his third “way of writing a story” were not the best suited to his genius. The second way,—that in which the plot links and unfolds the characters,—is the path on which he shows at his best. Here the gentleman adventurer was at ease from the moment he set forth on it. In _Treasure Island_ he raised the dime novel to the level of a classic. It has been charged against Stevenson’s stories that there are no women in them. To this charge one might enter what the lawyers call a plea of “confession and avoidance.” Even were it true, it would not necessarily be fatal. It may well be doubted whether that primitive factor which psychologists call “sex-interest” plays quite such a predominant, perpetual, and all-absorbing part in real life as that which neurotic writers assign to it in their books. But such a technical, (and it must be confessed, somewhat perilous,) defense is not needed. There are plenty of women in Stevenson’s books,—quite as many, and quite as delightful and important as you will find in the ordinary run of life. Marjory in _Will o’ the Mill_ is more lovable than Will himself. Olalla is the true heroine of the story which bears her name. Catriona and Miss Grant, in the second part of _David Balfour_, are girls of whom it would be an honour to be enamoured; and I make no doubt that David, (like Stevenson) was hard put to it to choose between them. Uma, in _The Beach of Falesa_, is a lovely insulated Eve. The two Kirsties, in _Weir of Hermiston_, are creatures of intense and vivid womanhood. It would have been quite impossible for a writer who had such a mother as Stevenson’s, such a friend of youth as Mrs. Sitwell, such a wife as Margaret Vandegrift, to ignore or slight the part which woman plays in human life. If he touches it with a certain respect and _pudor_, that also is in keeping with his character,—the velvet jacket again.