Page:Stevenson - The Art of Writing (1905).djvu/89

 

III

BOOKS WHICH HAVE INFLUENCED ME^[1]

The Editor^[2] has somewhat insidiously laid a trap for his correspondents, the question put appearing at first so innocent, truly cutting so deep. It is not, indeed, until after some reconnaissance and review that the writer awakes to find himself engaged upon something in the nature of autobiography, or, perhaps worse, upon a chapter in the life of that little, beautiful brother whom we once all had, and whom we have all lost and mourned, the man we ought to have been, the man we hoped to be. But when word has been passed (even to an

1. First published in the British Weekly, May 13, 1887.
2. Of the British Weekly.

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