‘I number this likeness,’ he said, ‘amongst my treasures. They go everywhere with me—this portrait of Stevenson and this little volume of extracts from his works.’ He fingered the cover affectionately. ‘The case,’ he continued, ‘is worn with much handling, but the rose-coloured lenses have not lost their power. Listen to this: “It is in virtue of his own desires and curiosities that any man continues to exist with even patience, that he is charmed by the look of things and people, and that he awakens every morning with a renewed appetite for work and pleasure.” And this: “Noble disappointment, noble self-denial, are not to be admired, not even to be pardoned, if they bring bitterness. It is one thing to enter the kingdom of heaven maim; another to maim yourself and stay outside.”’
He glanced up and handed me the volume. ‘Make your own selection,’ he suggested; ‘read something that condemns me.’
I acted on the suggestion, or, rather, the first part of it; for my selection, contrary to his request, was in the form of commendation:
‘“His was, indeed, a good influence in life while he was still among us; he had a fresh laugh; it did you good to see him; and, however sad he may have been at heart, he always bore a bold and cheerful countenance, and took fortune’s worst as it were the showers of spring.”’
I was not aware how entirely this fitted my friend’s case until some months had passed. Our friendship was only in its infancy at that time, little more than an acquaintance. We had no formal introduction. He had asked the time of day, then gone on to talk of his rose-coloured spectacles. We had much to say concerning his spectacles in the days that followed—always in a light and pleasant vein. To be tedious or heavy was, to his mind, a grievous fault, particularly in books. In life and in letters he would always look for, and never fail to find, the brightest side, the happiest passages. And he would apply the one to the other—a passage from Stevenson, or some other author, to an incident in his own or some other life—in a manner that was wonderfully illuminating and helpful.
In brief, his was ‘the life that loves, that gives, that loses itself, that overflows; the warm, hearty, social, helpful life.’ From a sorrowful chapter in his history he would weave a story for the help of others, always from a rose-coloured standpoint; from a calamity he would make a fairy tale, showing that, in spite of adversity, the House Beautiful was still upon its hill-top.
I remarked, in introducing him, that he was guilty of playing a part in a mystery. You will have seen through the mystery by now; at least, as regards his rose-coloured spectacles. But there is more to be said concerning his life and his love of books.
XII
WITH NATURE
ANOTHER meeting with my friend of the rose-coloured spectacles was beneath a blue sky and in a ‘glow of sunlight.’ This was some while after a visit to the little room that formed his home, where I had seen certain photographs which had aroused my interest and curiosity.
‘Come,’ he wrote, ‘and saunter with me for an hour or two in the best stretch of country within easy reach of London, which, to us, shall be the best between the two Poles. Take rail to Hampstead and meet me near the flagstaff, overlooking the heath valley, at any hour you care to name. But, mark you, I only promise to saunter. I have no legs for hard walking, and even if I had, would prefer an easy pace. You remember Thoreau’s words in praise of sauntering: “I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking; that is, of taking walks—who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering; which word is beautifully derived ‘from idle people who roved about the country, in the Middle Ages, and asked charity, under pretence of going a la Sainte Terra, to the Holy Land, till the children exclaimed, ‘There goes a Sainte-Terrer,’ a Saunterer—a Holy Lander. They who never go to the Holy Land in their walks, as they pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds; but they who do go there are saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean. Some, however, would derive the word from sans terre, without land or a home, which, therefore, in the good sense, will mean having no particular home, but equally at home everywhere. For this is the secret of successful sauntering. He who sits still in a house all the time may be the greatest vagrant of all; but the saunterer, in the good sense, is no more vagrant than the meandering river, which is all the while sedulously seeking the shortest course to the sea. But I prefer the first, which indeed is the most probable derivation. For every walk is a sort of crusade, preached by some Peter the Hermit in us, to go forth and reconquer this Holy Land from the hands of the Infidels.”’