Huxley was also fond of cats and dogs and pets of all kind. His son tells us that once he found his father in an uncomfortable seat, while the cat had the best chair. He defended himself by saying that he could not turn the beast away. In 1893 a man, who was writing on the _Pets of Celebrities_, wrote to him for information concerning his personal likings. Huxley sent him this letter: A long series of cats has reigned over my household for the last forty years or thereabouts; but I am sorry to say that I have no pictorial or other record of their physical and moral excellencies. The present occupant of the throne is a large young gray tabby, Oliver by name. Not that in any sense he is a protector, for I doubt whether he has the heart to kill a mouse. However, I saw him catch and eat the first butterfly of the season, and trust that the germ of courage thus manifest may develop, with age, into efficient mousing. As to sagacity, I should say that his judgment respecting the warmest place and the softest cushion in the room is infallible, his punctuality at meal-time is admirable, and his pertinacity in jumping on people's shoulders till they give him some of the best of what is going indicates great firmness. XLIV STEVENSON AT VAILIMA Robert Louis Stevenson, the writer of _Treasure Island_ and many other exciting romances, was an exile from home during the last few years of his life. The state of his health demanded a sunny clime and so he was forced to live in Samoa, a group of islands in the South Pacific. About three miles behind Apia, on a slight plateau seven hundred feet above the level of the sea, he cleared the forest and made a house. "I have chosen the land to be my land, the people to be my people, to live and die with," said Stevenson in his speech to the Samoan chiefs. Mr. Lloyd Osbourne, his step-son, thus describes their abode: "Unbroken forest covered Vailima when first we saw it; not the forest of the temperate zone with its varied glades and open spaces, but the thick tangle of the tropics, dense, dark, and cold in even the hottest day, where one must walk cutlass in hand to slash the lianas and the red-edged stinging leaves of a certain tree that continually bar one's path. The murmur of streams and cascades fell sometimes upon our ears as we wandered in the deep shade, and mingled with the cooing of wild doves and the mysterious, haunting sound of a native woodpecker at work. Our Chinaman, who was with us on our first survey, busied himself with taking samples of the soil, and grew almost incoherent with the richness of what he called the 'dirty.' We, for our part, were no less enchanted with what we saw, and could realize, as we forced our way through the thickets and skirted the deep ravines, what a noble labor lay before our axes, what exquisite views and glorious gardens could be carved out of the broken mountain side and the sullen forest."