number of times "the Divine name" is found in Stevenson's writings,
but there is something in such confessions as the following to his
father, when he was, amid hardship and illness, in Paris in 1878:


"Still I believe in myself and my fellow-men and the God who made
us all.... I am lonely and sick and out of heart. Well, I still
hope; I still believe; I still see the good in the inch, and cling
to it. It is not much, perhaps, but it is always something."


Yes, "Cumy" was a very effective teacher, whose influence and
teaching long remained. His other teachers, however famous and
highly gifted, did not attain to such success with him. And
because of this non-success they blamed him, as is usual. He was
fond of playing truant - declared, indeed, that he was about as
methodic a truant as ever could have existed. He much loved to go
on long wanderings by himself on the Pentland Hills and read about
the Covenanters, and while yet a youth of sixteen he wrote THE
PENTLAND RISING - a pamphlet in size and a piece of fine work -
which was duly published, is now scarce, and fetches a high price.
He had made himself thoroughly familiar with all the odd old
corners of Edinburgh - John Knox's haunts and so on, all which he
has turned to account in essays, descriptions and in stories -
especially in CATRIONA. When a mere youth at school, as he tells
us himself, he had little or no desire to carry off prizes and do
just as other boys did; he was always wishing to observe, and to
see, and try things for himself - was, in fact, in the eyes of
schoolmasters and tutors something of an IDLER, with splendid gifts
which he would not rightly apply. He was applying them rightly,