On one occasion one of these merry parties was enlivened by the presence of some young Japanese engineer students, who were on tour in Edinburgh, and who had brought introductions to the distinguished engineer, who made them very cordially welcome. It was not then very common to meet Japanese, and these quiet dignified young men, in their gracefully flowing black garments, interested the Stevenson family and their youthful guests greatly.
CHAPTER VI
HIS CHOICE OF A LITERARY LIFE AND HIS EARLIER BOOKS
'A clerk foredoom'd his father's soul to cross,
Who pens a stanza when he should engross.'
—Pope's Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot.
His son's refusal to become a civil engineer, and to take his natural position in the family business, was undoubtedly a great trial to a man of Mr Thomas Stevenson's character and professional traditions. That business had in it not only wealth, honour, and success, but, to every Stevenson, the glamour of romance, the fascination of adventure, and to the father his firm's history appealed strongly. Therefore the blow that fell upon him during that memorable walk, when his son at last found courage to confess to him that he could not persevere in the traditional path which he was expected to tread, must have been a crushing one, and it said much for the strength of his fatherly affection that he received it as he did. It was a painful decision for the son to make, and an equally painful one for the parents to hear.
Mrs Thomas Stevenson as well as her husband felt it a keen disappointment that her son could not walk in his father's footsteps. To them, as to all parents of their position and very natural social prejudices, it seemed a foolish thing for a man to turn seriously to literature as a means of winning his daily bread. The Edinburgh of that day did not think much of the profession of letters, and although the memory of Sir Walter Scott, the 'Edinburgh Reviewers,' and the literary lights of an earlier time was still green, all parents held the opinion that, although a few authors had made for themselves fame and fortune, literature was but a beggarly trade at the best, and one to which no wise man would apprentice his son.