Life — December 28, 1899 — page 7: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

-LIFE: 551 zestofa boy. <A trump steamer in beastly weather was an ideal setting for the sport. ‘We could cut about with the men and officers, stay in the wheel house, discuss all manner of things, and really be a litle at sea. And truly there is nothing else! 1 had literally forgotten what happiness was, and the fall mind—full of external and physical things.” And then follows the avowal, which is the key to the fascinating interest of the man and the charm of what is best in his books: ‘My heart literally sang ; I truly care fur nothing so much as for that. Itis the heart of Stevenson singing in his letters, in his stories, in his poems that gives them a place in the hearts of his readers and starts the music there. Much that he has written may fail of the highest critical approval bereafter, but enough will remain. singing with this joy of living, to catch the cars and charm the fancy of those who are eternally young: “ Lifo is over, life was gay; We have como the primrose way!” Droch, EAR LIFE: You might do much good, {f, tn your inimitable way, you would hold up to ridicute the unseemly practice now tn vogue of rigging women In men's adornments, viz., cassocks and surpiices, to parade in church choirs. And you would cheer the heart of some good church folk. Respectfully, Bostox, November 28, 1899, AN Eriscoraisan. Sorry to disoblige a friend, but what is more obvious than that surplices are chemises worn outside and that the cassock is mercly an austere form of wrapper! Woman’s title to these adornments seems at least as good as man's, and as for those ccclesiastical.garments with lace on them, which some of the high clergy wear in some churches, they seem to us to be feminine to the last stitch, LIFE'S FASHIONS FOR 1900. THE PIRKREPONT MOKGAN SUIT POR MILLIONAIRES, It was because Stevenson loved the game that his letters are so entertaining. He wrote ‘‘ Treasure Island ” out of his romantic mind, and then he dived it years after in his voyages among the South Sca Islands, ** Tell old Mayne Reid [if he were living] that ithasall come true,” he wrote in delight on this voyage, because the romance of his youth had found expression in reality. This coming true of his romantic dreams was the perpetual joy iu life for Stevenson. His instincts led Lim aright, and he was not disappointed. If he had followed wisdom and stayed at home and coddled his illoesses—bitterness would have colored his writings as he grew older. He always felt the possibilities of this in old age, if he should ever grow old. But he a'so had premonitions that fate would be kind to him and spare bim that kind of age. ‘I was not born for age,” he wrote to Gosse two days before his death. ‘’I have lost the path that makes it easy and natural for you to descend the bill, 1am going at it straight, and where I have to go down it is a precipice.” . * . TEVENSON had to change merely the scene, and imme- diately he was deep in a new game of life, with all the “GLAD TO SEE YOU, MONKIE. COME KIGHT IN.? Saxe ESS ri a