R.L.S. had certain flirtations with the Edinburgh underworld of his time, for the dreary respectability and precise formalism which has settled like a cloud on the once jovial Auld Reekie was abhorrent to the soul of the bright youth. No doubt he had his adventures, but if they are still known they are not recorded. There is some tradition of a novel, _Maggie Arnot_, I think it was called, wherein he told strange tales of dark Edinburgh closes, but pious hands consigned it, no doubt wisely and properly, to the flames; and though certain Corinthians were scornful and wrathful, yet you feel his true function was that of the wise and kindly, sympathetic and humane essayist and moralist that we have learned to love and admire, the almost Covenanting writer whom of a surety the men of the Covenant would have thrust out and perhaps violently ended in holy indignation. I gather a few scraps. Of the stories of his childhood this seems admirably characteristic. He was busy once with pencil and paper, and then addressed his mother: “Mamma, I have drawed a man. Shall I draw his soul now?” The makers of the New Town when they planned those wide, long, exposed streets, forgot one thing, and that was the Edinburgh weather, against which, if you think of it, the sheltered ways of the ancient city were an admirable protection. In many a passage R.L.S. has told us how the east wind, and the easterly “haar,” and the lack of sun assailed him like cruel and implacable foes. He would lean over the great bridge that spans what was once the Nor’ Loch, and watch the trains as they sped southward on their way, as it seemed, to lands of sunshine and romance. [Illustration: ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON, As an Edinburgh Student]