The Kimball graphic. (Kimball, Brule County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1905, 1889-11-22
STEVENSON AND JeFFER,es.

There are two men-one Is still ltt3
Ing, the other died but yesterday-whoI
not only made-believe when they were
children, but in their grown-up years
have been able to tell us all about the
fairyland in which they once lived, who
not only have invented adventures and
shipwrecks, and savages and heroes
and hunters, and all the other things,
but have taken lis into their confidence
and shown us the make-believe from
the very beginning. These two men
are Robert louis Stevenson and
Richard Jetferies; and there are no
writer's of books who should be more
dear to children still making-believe,
and to men and women still capable of
a thrill of pleasure in recalling the
niake-believes of the past.
MI. Stevenson, of course, has written
stories rs real and rs true as robin
son Crusoe.n There is no m~ake-believe
about John Silver and David Balfour
and Alan Breck; we know they lived
ms certainly as we know Robin Hood
went shooting through Sherwood
Forest. or Ulysses went wandering
from shore to shore. But there is a
little volume called the ..Child's Gar.
den of Verses which is nothing more
than a record of the make-believes of
the little Robert Louis Stevenson, when
he and his cousins Willie and Henrietta,
in the old manse and the garden by the
mill-stream, were
king and queen, a-
Were hunter, soldier, tar.
And all the thousand things that children are:
a record of the days when sin the bas-
ket on the lea" he was a pirate a-steer-
ing of his boat to Providence, or
Babylon. or off to Malabar; or at even
ing, when the lamp was lighted, a hun
Ter with his gun, crawling
"Round the forest track
Away behind the sofa-back."
Grown-up people have to travel long
and far in search of adventure and
strange lands; but, in childhood, giants
and enchanters and witches, and, better
still. great heroes long since dead, wait
FOR us at our front doors; in the tiniest
garden we can see more marvels than
are to be met with in Il journey round
the world; in n morning we can do
more great deeds than a Napoleon in
his lifetime. In his other books
Stevenson is constantly showing, in
one way or another, his love of adven-
ture and daring; but his Garden of
Verses is filled with that manc
| which comes TO us all when we are
children, but which goes forever, once
we take our seats by the fire with our
elders and refuse ito play at any
thing"
/ am afraid Richard JefTcrics is less
well known than Stevenson. He was
not what the world calls a successful
man, though he wrote books which will
be read until the English language is
forgotten. His life was a long strug-
gle to ME- both ends meet, and his
last wears were still further darkencd
by i'll health and cruel pain. But he
forgot his troubles when he was al,
work. AS Il boy, he had lived in u
country which, for cultivated England.
is wild cnoungh. His home was a beau.
tiful old farmhouse, and close by were
wide, rolling downs-really ups or
hills - marked here and there with
great Druidic.l stones, and remains of
British carth-works. Above all things
he loved this wild and lovely country,
aud. next to ii, ne loved his books
the story of Ulysses, ballads. the adj.
ventures OF IN strange and
savage lands. Like the little Steven.
son he was always playing at the books
he read. One who knew him as Il boy
tells how the two favorite pastimes Of
his happy young years We're, chose Of
living on a desert island, and of wag.
ing war with the Indians"
As u mar he remembered with keen
pleasure these delightful makc-believes
and put them all into Il book that other
little boys might enjoy them with him.
Like Stevenson he wrote some stories
in which there was ven more make-be-
lieve, because he tried to pretend there
was MT any makc-believe at ALL
Elizabeth Robins Pcnnci, IN st. Nicho