5 10 15 20 Small Janet sits weeping 'mid the daisies; Must you follow Roger?" Then he raises Guides her tiny steps with kindness tender, All his courage and his strength would lend her Till they front the blazing east together; Up the sky in the still summer weather, All forgotten is the boy's ambition, Low the standard lies, Still they stand and gaze,-a sweeter vision That was splendid, Roger, that was glorious, Better than to plant your flag victorious A BOY'S DIVING TRIP1 ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1850. He was never strong in body, but he had a manly, joyous spirit which made him beloved wherever he went. His literary work is remarkable for the care and thought which he put into it. He was an artist in words. Among his books for boys are "Kidnapped” and “Treasure Island.” The last six years of his life were spent in Samoa; he died there in 1894. 5 NOTE. This essay recounts a personal experience of Stevenson's boyhood. His father was a harbor engineer, to whom the final failure of the Wick breakwater was a great disappointment. "The sea was too strong for man's arts," says the son in another essay, " and the work was deserted." 10 At the time of this adventure, however, there was every hope of success. The bay of Wick is on the northeast coast of Scotland. Into the bay of Wick stretched the dark length of the unfinished breakwater in its cage of open staging; and away at the extreme end the divers toiling unseen on the 15 foundation. To go down in the diving dress, that was my absorbing fancy; and with the countenance of a certain diver, Bob Bain by name, I gratified the whim. It was gray, harsh, easterly weather, and the swell ran pretty high, when I found myself at last on the diver's 20 platform, twenty pounds of lead upon each foot and my whole person swollen with ply and ply of woolen underclothing. One moment the salt wind was whistling round 1 From "Random Memories." Copyright, 1892, by Charles Scribner's Sons, Publishers. my nightcapped head; the next I was crushed almost double under the weight of the helmet. As that intolerable burden was laid upon me I could have found it in my heart to cry off from the whole enterprise. 5 But it was too late. The attendants began to turn the air mills and the air to whistle through the tube; some one screwed in the barred window of the visor, and I was cut off in a moment from my fellow-men, — standing there in their midst a creature deaf and dumb, pathetically 10 looking forth upon them from a climate of his own. But time was scarce given me to realize my isolation; the weights were now hung upon my back and breast, the signal rope was thrust into my unresisting hand, and setting a twenty-pound foot upon the ladder, I began 15 ponderously to descend. Some twenty rounds below the platform, twilight fell. Looking up I saw a low, green heaven mottled with vanishing bells of white; looking around, except for the weedy spokes and shafts of the ladder, nothing but a 20 green gloaming, somewhat opaque but very restful and delicious. Thirty rounds lower I stepped off on the foundation; a dumb, helmeted figure took me by the hand and made a gesture (as I read it) of encouragement; and looking in at the creature's window, I beheld the 25 face of Bain. There we were, hand to hand and eye to eye; and either might have burst himself with shouting and not a whisper come to his companion's hearing. Each, in his own little world of air, stood incommunicably separate. As I began to go forward with the hand of my estranged companion, a world of tumbled stones was 5 visible, pillared with the weedy uprights of the staging; overhead, a flat roof of green; a little in front, the sea wall, like an unfinished rampart. And presently Bob motioned me to leap upon a stone; I looked to see if he were in earnest, and he signed to me the more imperiously. 10 Now the block stood six feet high; it would have been quite a leap to me unencumbered; with the breast and back weights, and the twenty pounds upon each foot, and the staggering load of the helmet, the thing was out of 5 reason. I laughed aloud in my tomb, and to prove to Bob how far he was astray, I gave a little impulse upward from my toes. Up I soared like a bird, my companion soaring at my side. As high as to the stone, and then higher, I pursued 10 my impotent and empty flight. Even when the strong arm of Bob had checked my shoulders, my heels continued their ascent; so that I blew out sideways like an autumn leaf, and must be hauled in, hand over hand, as sailors haul in the slack of a sail, and propped upon my feet 15 again like an intoxicated sparrow. Yet a little higher on the foundation, and we began to be affected by the swell, running there like a strong breeze of wind. Or so I must suppose; for, safe in my cushion of air, I was only swayed idly like a weed, now 20 borne helplessly abroad and now swiftly yet with dreamlike gentleness-impelled against my guide. It is bitter to return to infancy, to be supported, and directed, and perpetually set upon your feet by the hand of some one else. And although I had a fine, dizzy joy in 25 my surroundings, and longed and tried, and always failed, |