The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 22 / Juvenilia and Other Papers

E-text prepared by Marius Masi, Jonathan Ingram, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
Of this SWANSTON EDITION in Twenty-five Volumes of the Works of ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON Two Thousand and Sixty Copies have been printed, of which only Two Thousand Copies are for sale.
This is No. ............
R. L. S. SPEARING FISH IN THE BOW OF THE SCHOONER “EQUATOR”

Facsimile of original Title-page


Two hundred years ago a tragedy was enacted in Scotland, the memory whereof has been in great measure lost or obscured by the deep tragedies which followed it. It is, as it were, the evening of the night of persecution—a sort of twilight, dark indeed to us, but light as the noonday when compared with the midnight gloom which followed. This fact, of its being the very threshold of persecution, lends it, however, an additional interest.
One example in particular we may cite:
This was the state of matters, when an outrage was committed which gave spirit and determination to the oppressed countrymen, lit the flame of insubordination, and for the time at least recoiled on those who perpetrated it with redoubled force.