Transcribed from the 1921 Chatto and Windus edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org

MORAL EMBLEMS

& OTHER POEMS WRITTEN AND
ILLUSTRATED WITH WOODCUTS
BY ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
FIRST PRINTED AT THE DAVOS
PRESS BY LLOYD OSBOURNE
AND WITH A PREFACE
BY THE SAME

LONDON
CHATTO & WINDUS
1921

PREFACE

It is with some diffidence that I sit down at an age so mature that I cannot bring myself to name it, to write a preface to works I printed and published at twelve.

I would have the reader see a little boy living in a châlet on a Swiss mountain-side, overlooking a straggling village named Davos-Platz, where consumptives coming to get well more often died. It was winter; the sky-line was broken by frosty peaks; the hamlet—it was scarcely more then—lay huddled in the universal snow. Morning came late, and the sun set early. A still, silent and icy night had an undue share of the round of hours, which at least it had the grace to mitigate by a myriad of shining stars.