" The Sheriff, in this letter to me, recalls
several reminiscences of Stevenson-some in a playful or contrariwise
vein, and another memory illustrates, he says, "the sweet
reasonableness which mingled with his wayward Bohemianism"; but
space does not allow me to quote more than how, "It seems but
yesterday that I met Louis in the Parliament House, and said I heard
he had got a case. And I seem to see the twinkle in his eye and the
toss of his arms as he answered, 'Yes, my boy, you'll see how I'll
stick in, now that I've tasted blood.'"
Louis' mother showed this friend, Mr. Guthrie, a succession of her
boy's photographs, ending in wig and gown as an advocate. "That is
what I call from Baby to Bar," she said; and then added, beginning
with a smile, and ending with a break in her voice, "I said to Louis
once that the next collection would be from Bar to Baronet, and he
replied, 'It will be from Bar to Burial.'" Except at the "dear old
Spec.," he mixed little his equals in Edinburgh. As a writer in
Blackwood points out, at the period he had grown into swallow-tails,
Edinburgh was by no means devoid of intellectual company, which even
a famed Robert Louis need not have despised.
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