Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 13
Little Journeys to the Homes
of Great Lovers
by
Elbert Hubbard
Memorial Edition
New York
1916.
CONTENTS
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON AND FANNY OSBOURNE
JOSIAH AND SARAH WEDGWOOD
WILLIAM GODWIN AND MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT
DANTE AND BEATRICE
JOHN STUART MILL AND HARRIET TAYLOR
PARNELL AND KITTY O'SHEA
PETRARCH AND LAURA
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI AND ELIZABETH ELEANOR SIDDAL
BALZAC AND MADAME HANSKA
FENELON AND MADAME GUYON
FERDINAND LASSALLE AND HELENE VON DONNIGES
LORD NELSON AND LADY HAMILTON
[Pg 10]ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON AND FANNY OSBOURNE
We thank Thee for this place in which we dwell; for the love thatunites us; for the peace accorded us this day; for the hope withwhich we expect the morrow; for the health, the work, the food, andthe bright skies that make our lives delightful; for our friends inall parts of the earth, and our friendly helpers in this foreignisle. Give us courage and gaiety and the quiet mind. Spare to usour friends, soften to us our enemies. Bless us, if it may be, inall our innocent endeavors. If it may not, give us the strength toencounter that which is to come, that we be brave in peril,constant in tribulation, temperate in wrath, and in all changes offortune, and down to the gates of death, loyal and loving one toanother.
—Vailima Prayers
There is a libel leveled at the Scotch and encouraged, I am very sorryto say, by Chauncey Depew, when he told of approaching the docks inGlasgow and seeing the people on shore convulsed with laughter, and wastold that their mirth was the result of one of his jokes told the yearbefore, the point just being perceived.
Bearing on the same line we have the legend that the adage, "He laughsbest who laughs last," was the invention of a Scotchman who wasendeavoring to explain away a popular failing of his countrymen.
An adage seems to be a statement the reverse of which is true—or not.In all the realm of letters, where can be found anything moredelightfully whimsical and deliciously humorous than James Barrie's"Peter Pan"? And as a writer of exquisite humor, as opposed to Englishwit, that other Scotchman, Robert Louis Stevenson, stands supreme.
To Robert Louis life was altogether too important a matter to be takenseriously. The quality of fine fooling sho