Spirit and Art of Robert Louis Stevenson 103
Edinburgh University, though he was an omnivorous
reader. Because a pedagogue is writing this essay, a dull lit-
tle moral is due just here. The charming essay “Some Col-
lege Memories” warns students against too much study, ad-
vising them that health is more precious than learning. It is
right counsel so far as it goes, but it is not desperately
needed in most latitudes. In twenty years of teaching I
have known only one student to break down from too much
study,—and it was dreadful and all wrong,—but I have
known several thousand who did not break down from over-
study.
At the university Stevenson took the course in engineer-
ing, intending to be a lighthouse engineer, like his kinsmen
and forebears. He did sufficient work to get a medal for a
special paper on lighthouse improvements, but his health
was too frail for him to practise the profession, and he had
a serious breakdown not long after graduation. So he
studied law, and at twenty-five was admitted to the bar, but
never practised. Then he had a few years of tolerable
health and was busy writing, studying Scottish history, con-
tributing essays to the “Cornhill Magazine” and his first
stories to “Temple Bar” magazine. At twenty-nine he had
broken down again, and, at San Francisco and Monterey,
seemed about to die. But he rallied and was married in-
stead—to an American lady, Mrs. Fannie Van de Grift
Osbourne. They went for health and a honeymoon to a
deserted mining camp near Calistoga, and out of this visit
Stevenson afterward made a book, “The Silverado Squat-
ters.”
The marriage had not pleased Stevenson’s family, who
were Scotch Presbyterians and therefore suspicious of mar-
riage to a divorcée; but after a while they were reconciled,
and Stevenson took his wife to the parental home. Scot-