The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls

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overhead."

He accomplished little work at this time. Sometimes for days he would be
unable to write at all. But the little boy who had once told his mother,
"I have been trying to make myself happy," was the same man now who
could say: "I was never bored in my life." When unable to do anything
else he would build houses of cards or lie in bed and model little
figures in clay. Anything to keep his hands busy and his mind distracted
from the stories that crowded his brain and he had not strength to put
on paper. His one horror, the fear that urged him on to work feverishly
when he was suffering almost beyond endurance, was the thought that his
illness might one day make him a helpless invalid.

The splendid part to think of is that no hint of his dark days and pains
crept into his writings or saddened those who came to see him. Complaint
he kept to himself, prayed that he might "continue to be eager to be
happy," lived with the best that was in him from day to day, and the