Excerpt from The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson, Vol. 2 of 2: With Portraits The book, however, although it was in Stevenson's mind for several years and was advertised as in prepa ration, was never written, or, so far as I know, even begun. Not the least interesting part of the whole story is the picture of Stevenson sitting down to ad dress a letter of inquiries to Mr. Gladstone, for whose political career he had always the most complete aversion, and finding himself, somewhat to his dis may, overcome with an involuntary reverence for the statesman who embodied so much of England's past. Casting about for a new story, he turned in February to the highroad, that to him and to his father before him had for long been one of the richest fields of ro mance. When, to his delight, he had first found his powers of narrative in Treasure Island, and discovered what possibilities lay before him of writing for boys the kind of stories he liked himself, he announced with glee to Mr. Henley that his next book was to be Jerry Abershaw: A Tale of Putney Heath. 1 He was also to write The Squaw Men: or, The Wild West, and of this one chapter was actually drafted. The new ven ture was, however, called The Great North Road, but, like St. Ives in later days, it rapidly increased in proportions and in difficulty of management. So at the end of the eighth chapter it was relinquished for Kid napped and apparently dropped out of sight. Already in its beginnings it showed an increase of skill in dealing with Nance Holdaway, who foreshadowed other heroines yet to come. 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.