(November 13, 1850–December 3, 1894), was a Scottish author and novelist. He wrote: New Arabian Nights, 1882; Treasure Island, 1883; A Child’s Garden of Verses, 1885; Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, 1886; and Kidnapped, 1886. He suffered from tuberculosis, and in an effort to improve his health, sailed with his American wife to the Island of Samoa. They settled there and he continued to write.
In Songs of Travel—If This Were Faith, Stevenson wrote:
God, if this were enough,
That I see things bare to the buff.2895
In 1889, in his work The Master of Ballantrae—Mr. Mackellar’s Journey, Stevenson wrote:
Not every man is so great a coward as he thinks he is—nor yet so good a Christian.2896
Shortly before he died, Stevenson wrote:
Written in the East, these characters live forever in the West; written in one province, they pervade the world; penned in rude times, they are prized more and more as civilization advances; product of antiquity, they come home to the bosoms of men, women, and children in modern days. Then is it any exaggeration to say that the “characters of the Scripture are a marvel of the mind?”2897
On the bronze memorial to him in St. Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh, Scotland, Robert Louis Stevenson’s prayer is engraved:
Give us grace and strength to forbear and to persevere. Give us courage and gaiety and the quiet mind, spare to us our friends, soften to us our enemies.2898