The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls

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This was Louis's first real literary attempt. He was not able to write
himself, but dictated to his mother and illustrated the story and its
cover with pictures which he designed and painted himself.

He won the prize and from that time, his mother says, "it was the desire
of his heart to be an author."

During the winter of 1856-57 his favorite cousin, Robert Alan Mowbray
Stevenson, usually called Bob, visited them; a great treat for Louis,
not only because his ill health kept him from making many companions of
his own age, but because Bob loved many of the same things he did and to
"make believe" was as much a part of his life as Louis's. Many fine
games they had together; built toy theatres, the scenery and characters
for which they bought for a "penny plain and twopence colored," and were
never tired of dressing up. One of their chief delights, he says, was in
"rival kingdoms of our own invention--Nosingtonia and Encyclopaedia, of
which we were perpetually drawing maps." Even the eating of porridge at