The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls

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visits to England and France between. Switzerland never suited
Stevenson. He disliked living among invalids, and with his love for
exploring the nooks and corners of any spot he was in he felt like a
prisoner when he found himself shut in a valley among continual snow
with few walks possible for him to take. "The mountains are about me
like a trap," he complained. "You can not foot it up a hillside and
behold the sea on a great plain, but live in holes and corners and can
change only one for the other."

Tobogganing was the only sport of Davos Platz he really enjoyed, and he
pursued that to his heart's content. "Perhaps the true way to toboggan
is alone and at night," he said. "First comes the tedious climb
dragging your instrument behind you. Next a long breathing space, alone
with the snow and pine woods, cold, silent and solemn to the heart. Then
you push off; the toboggan fetches away, she begins to feel the hill, to
glide, to swim, to gallop. In a breath you are out from under the
pine-trees and the whole heaven full of stars reels and flashes