Home-keeping hearts are happiest."
Somebody quoted, to which another replied:
"Home-keeping youth have ever homely wits."
The autograph has long since disappeared, but how often have I thought with regret of the amused expression in Stevenson's eyes at the Salamander fancy! What tales of witchery might have been spun from those themes worthy of the magic of his pen, the fire-dwelling man-eater, or the discovery of the Greek shepherd!
Stevenson was amused over our enthusiasm, and the eagerness of some of the younger members of the company to lionize him.
"And what do you consider your brightest failure?" inquired our host.
"'Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,'" he replied, without a moment's hesitation, adding, "that is the worst thing I ever wrote."
"Yet you owe it to your dream-expedition," some one reminded him.
"The dream-expedition?" he repeated. "Yes, that was perhaps a compensation for the bad things."
Benjamin Franklin has said that success ruins many a man. The success of "Trilby" killed Du Maurier, and many authors have had their heads turned for far less than the Jekyll and Hyde furore that swept the country at that time. But the Mannerly Stevenson carried his honors lightly. Smiling over the popularity of the "worst thing he ever wrote," he revealed that quality in his own nature that was finer than anything he had given to print, the soul whose indomitable courage could bear the brunt of adverse circumstance, and even contumely, and hold its own integrity, becoming a law unto itself.