Robert Louis Stevenson The Samoans insisted on surrounding his body with a watch-guard during the night and on bearing him on their shoulders to nearby Mount Vaea, where they buried him on a spot overlooking the sea on land donated by British Acting Vice Consul Thomas Trood. Stevenson had always wanted his Requiem inscribed on his tomb: Stevenson was loved by the Samoans, and his tombstone epigraph was translated to a Samoan song of grief. Half of Stevenson's original manuscripts are lost, including those of "Treasure Island", "The Black Arrow," and "The Master of Ballantrae". His heirs sold his papers during World War
Robert Louis Stevenson To provide some security, it was agreed that Stevenson should read Law (again at Edinburgh University) and be called to the Scottish bar. In his 1887 poetry collection "Underwoods", Stevenson muses on his having turned from the family profession: Say not of me that weakly I declined<br> The labours of my sires, and fled the sea,<br> The towers we founded and the lamps we lit,<br> To play at home with paper like a child.<br> But rather say: "In the afternoon of time"<br> "A strenuous family dusted from its hands"<br> "The sand of granite, and beholding far"<br> "Along the sounding coast