Louis had
tried to be an engineer. He liked the swinging, smoking seas on
which they struggled for a site for sheltering masonry. As in the
case of other Stevensons, the romance of the work was welcome to
him, but the office stool frightened him. When the would-be author
had refused to follow in his kinsmen's footsteps, he promised to
study as an advocate to satisfy his father, who urged his son to
follow a recognised profession. Owing to his easy-going schooling
and lack of a settled course of study, the law classes were
excellent training for the erratic, mercurial-notioned youth.
Stevenson had the good fortune in 1869 to be elected a member of the
Speculative, the famed Debating Society where Jeffrey first met
Scott. There Stevenson encountered his contemporaries in years and
social standing, his superiors in debate, and he, "the lean, ugly,
idle, unpopular student," as he calls himself, enjoyed "its
atmosphere of good-fellowship, its vivid and varied interests, its
traditions of honourable labour and success.
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