Collected works > Edinburgh edition, 1894-98 - Works of Robert Louis Stevenson > Volume 3, 1895 - Travels and Excursions, Volume II

THE HUNTER'S FAMILY
chewing gum and spitting. He would stand a while
looking down ; and then he would toss back his
shock of hair, and laugh hoarsely, and spit, and
bring forward a new subject. A man, he told us,
who bore a grudge against him, had poisoned his
dog. ' That was a low thing for a man to do now,
wasn't it ? It wasn't like a man, that, nohow. But
I got even with him : I pisoned Ms dog.' His
clumsy utterance, his rude embarrassed manner,
set a fresh value on the stupidity of his remarks.
I do not think I ever appreciated the meaning of
two words until I knew Irvine — the verb loaf, and
the noun oaf\ between them, they complete his
portrait. He could lounge, and wriggle, and rub
himself against the wall, and grin, and be more
in everybody's way than any other two people that
I ever set my eyes on. Nothing that he did became
him ; and yet you were conscious that he was one
of your own race, that his mind was cumbrously
at work, revolving the problem of existence like a
quid of gum, and in his own cloudy manner enjoy-
ing life, and passing judgment on his fellows.
Above all things, he was delighted with himself.
You would not have thought it, from his uneasy
manners and troubled, struggling utterance ; but
he loved himself to the marrow, and was happy and
proud like a peacock on a rail.
His self-esteem was, indeed, the one joint in his
harness. He could be got to work, and even kept
at work, by flattery. As long as my wife stood
over him, crying out how strong he was, so long
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