The Novels and Tales of Robert Louis Stevenson (Volume 14) (Paperback)

Book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1895. Excerpt: ... MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS The following three papers, puhlished originally in Scrihner's Magazine in 1888, are added for convenience to this volume. They have not hefore been included in this collection of essays. MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS POPULAR AUTHORS THE scene is the deck of an Atlantic liner, close by the doors of the ashpit, where it is warm: the time, night: the persons, an emigrant of an inquiring turn of mind and a deck hand. "Now," says the emigrant, "is there not any book that gives a true picture of a sailor's life?" -- "Well," returns the other, with great deliberation and emphasis, "there is one; that is just a sailor's life. You know all about it, if you know that."-- "What do you call it?" asks the emigrant.-- "They call it Tom Holt's Log," says the sailor. The emigrant entered the fact in his note-book: with a wondering query as to what sort of stuff this Tom Holt would prove to be: and a double-headed prophecy that it would prove one of two things: either a solid, dull, admirable piece of truth, or mere ink and banditti. Well, the emigrant was wrong: it was something more curious than either, for it was a work by Stephens Hayward. Copyright, 1888, 1895, by Charles Scribner's Sons. I In this paper I propose to put the authors' names in capital letters; the most of them have not much hope of durable renown; their day is past, the poor dogs -- they begin swiftly to be forgotten; and Hayward is of the number. Yet he was a popular writer; and what is really odd, he had a vein of hare-brained merit. There never was a man of less pretension; the intoxicating presence of an ink-bottle, which was too much for the strong head of Napoleon, left him sober and light-hearted; he had no shade of literary vanity; he was never at the trouble to be dull. His works fell out of date in the day...