Robert Louis Stevenson, the son of a lighthouse engineer, was born at Edinburgh in 1850. He studied in the university of that city and became a lawyer, though he never practiced. On account of his ill-health he went to Samoa, where he lived with his family and wrote his books. He died in 1894. A few of his stories are: “Treasure island,” “Kidnapped,” “New Arabian Nights,” “St. Ives”; his essays are, “Virginibus Puerisque,” “Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes,” and “Familiar Studies on Men and Books.”

Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie,
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me;
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from the sea
And the hunter home from the hill.