Fiction > Book editions > Leipzig, 1888 - Kidnapped

6 DEDICATION.
was a grim old fire-eater in his day, has in this new
avatar no more desperate purpose than to steal some
young gentleman's attention from his Ovid, carry him
awhile into the Highlands and the last century, and
pack him to bed with some engaging images to mingle
with his dreams.
As for you, my dear Charles, I do not even ask you
to like the tale. But perhaps when he is older, your
son will; he may then be pleased to find his father's
name on the fly-leaf; and in the meanwhile it pleases
me to set it there, in memory of many days that were
happy and some (now perhaps as pleasant to remember)
that were sad. If it is strange for me to look back
from a distance both in time and space on these bygone
adventures of our youth, it must be stranger for you
who tread the same streets— who may to-morrow open
the door of the old Speculative, where we begin to rank
with Scott and Robert Emmet and the beloved and in-
glorious Macbean — or may pass the corner of the close
where that great society, the L. J. R., held its meetings
and drank its beer, sitting in the seats of Burns and his
companions. I think I see you, moving there by plain
daylight, beholding with your natural eyes those places
that have now become for your companion a part of
the scenery of dreams. How, in the intervals of pre-
sent business, the past must echo in your memory!
Let it not echo often without some kind thoughts of
your friend
R. L. S.
Skerryvore,
Bournemouth.