though not in their way. It is not only in his APOLOGY FOR IDLERS
that this confession is made, but elsewhere, as in his essay on A
COLLEGE MAGAZINE, where he says, "I was always busy on my own
private end, which was to learn to write. I kept always two books
in my pocket, one to read and one to write in!"

When he went to College it was still the same - he tells us in the
funniest way how he managed to wheedle a certificate for Greek out
of Professor Blackie, though the Professor owned "his face was not
familiar to him"! He fared very differently when, afterwards his
father, eager that he should follow his profession, got him to
enter the civil engineering class under Professor Fleeming Jenkin.
He still stuck to his old courses - wandering about, and, in
sheltered corners, writing in the open air, and was not present in
class more than a dozen times. When the session was ended he went
up to try for a certificate from Fleeming Jenkin. "No, no, Mr
Stevenson," said the Professor; "I might give it in a doubtful
case, but yours is not doubtful: you have not kept my classes."
And the most characteristic thing - honourable to both men - is to
come; for this was the beginning of a friendship which grew and
strengthened and is finally celebrated in the younger man's sketch
of the elder. He learned from Professor Fleeming Jenkin, perhaps
unconsciously, more of the HUMANIORES, than consciously he did of
engineering. A friend of mine, who knew well both the Stevenson
family and the Balfours, to which R. L. Stevenson's mother
belonged, recalls, as we have seen, his acting in the private
theatricals that were got up by the Professor, and adds, "He was
then a very handsome fellow, and looked splendidly as Sir Charles
Pomander, and essayed, not wholly without success, Sir Peter
Teazle," which one can well believe, no less than that he acted