Is there any good and comfortable thing that the heart of youth will not flee from, in its longing for the untrodden way? The boy Royal was a fugitive from the eggs-and-bacon type of breakfast. He was in search of some ambrosial, sit-by-the-brookside food more precious and sustaining to his spirit, so he dreamed, than any of the comestibles, fine or gross, involving his parents in worrisome monthly bills at the grocer’s. For him, life and letters were mingled mysteriously in the same sparkling cup, and he wanted to drink of that cup freely. One can do such things better away from home. He had therefore wrung from his mother, his father being absent in the city, working for the wherewithal, her unwilling consent to a solitary three days’ walking tour, his entire luggage to consist of a flashlight, the Iliad, and a toothbrush. Oh, of course, a full tin of provender slung across the back of his Norfolk jacket! You will doubtless understand what his twin brother Peter meant when he said that the difference between Royal’s travels and R. L. S.’s was all in one word; a preposition, don’t they call it? Stevenson’s Travels were With a Donkey, Royal’s were Of a Donkey. Peter was sore because he had not been invited to be a donkey too. The twins loved one another dearly, but now that adolescence was upon them, they often wounded one another sorely. Each boy, recognizing certain superiorities in the other, felt all the more bound to rescue and protect and assert his own individuality. Who knows what dire harm to ourselves may issue from our brother’s excellences? And Royal, even more than Peter, longed for a more emphatic identity of his own—something so distinct and compelling that the world would forever cease contrasting and comparing him with another.