Excerpt from The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson The duty of writing this book was finally entrusted to me because during the last two and a half years before my cousin's death I had on his invitation made vama my home and the point of departure for my journeys, and, apart from the members of his own fam ily, I had been throughout that period the only one of his intimate friends in touch with every side of his life. In order to present the book in a single volume it has been necessary to reduce it in bulk, but this oppor tunity has been used solely for the purpose of lighten ing it and rendering it generally more readable. Part of the matter omitted, such as the Vailima Prayers, has now been published elsewhere: the chief part of the re mainder related either to Samoan politics or contained details concerning some of Stevenson's minor works, which were of interest only to the special student who can still find what he needs in the unabridged edition. Some quotations haye been abridge'dand a few trivial paragraphs omittéd'w The framework has been slightly cut down: the general dfieéé of; The picture has, so far as I could manage, remained: tm'aitered. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.