The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls

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for pleasure, and the things in his friend's bag were not plans against
the government, but merely scraps of poetry and notes on their travels
that he liked to amuse himself by making as they went along. [Footnote:
This incident is told in the "Epilogue to An Inland Voyage."]

The canoe trips ended in a visit to the artists' colony at
Fontainebleau, where Bob Stevenson and a brother of Sir Walter's were
spending their summer. This place always had a particular attraction for
Louis and he spent many weeks both there and at Grez near by during the
next few years.

The free and easy life led by the artists suited him exactly, although
he found it hard to accomplish any work of his own, but dreamed and
planned all sorts of essays, verses, and tales which he never wrote,
while the others put their pictures on canvas.

"I kept always two books in my pocket," he says, "one to read and one to