The name is absent

Spirit and Art of Robert Louis Stevenson 115
“Treasure Island,” in which Mr. James says, “I have been
a child but I have never been on a quest for buried treasure.”
“Here is indeed a wilful paradox,” says Stevenson by way
of reply, “for if he has never been on a quest for buried
treasure, it can be demonstrated that he has never been a
child. There never was a child (unless Master James) but
has hunted gold and been a pirate and a military commander
and a bandit of the mountains.” Stevenson has taken the
things that boys think about and clothed them in a cultivated
art, thereby giving the boy, at one and the same time, what
the boy wants and what he ought to have—a satisfaction of
his craving for adventure, and an unconscious education in
literary art. Of course, he has done something which the
boy never sees, ought not to see—he has related these
breathless adventures with a charming, half-suppressed
humor. The older reader catches the twinkle in Stevenson’s
eye while he is reciting these blood-curdling unrealities, but
the boy takes it all in solemn earnest. It is melodrama with
a smile.

Stevenson’s imagination was the gift of youth, but his
art was the product of almost incredible toil. And once
more the pedagogue mounts the rostrum. Stevenson has
written an “Apology for Idlers.” College students have
been known to find balm and solace in this essay, but they
who have soothed their souls with this have generally neg-
lected to read the essay called “A College Magazine” and
the series of essays entitled “The Art of Writing.” These
contain no counsel for idleness, but rather for sustained
labor such as only a brave and purposeful soul is capable of.
They tell the story of how Stevenson learned to write
through many years of harder toil than most day laborers
could endure.

With the most painstaking toil, he studied the masters of

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