Collected works > Edinburgh edition, 1894-98 - Works of Robert Louis Stevenson > Volume 11, 1895 - Miscellanies, Volume III

CRABBED AGE AND YOUTH
navigate the metaphysics, write halting verses, run a
mile to see a fire, and wait all day long in the theatre
to applaud Hernani. There is some meaning in the
old theory about wild oats ; and a man who has not
had his green-sickness and got done with it for good
is as little to be depended on as an unvaccinated
infant. ' It is extraordinary,' says Lord Beacons-
field, one of the brightest and best preserved of
youths up to the date of his last novel,i * it is ex-
traordinary how hourly and how violently change
the feelings of an inexperienced young man.' And
this mobility is a special talent intrusted to his
care ; a sort of indestructible virginity ; a magic
armour, with which he can pass unhurt through
great dangers and come unbedaubed out of the
miriest passages. Let him voyage, speculate, see
all that he can, do all that he may ; his soul has as
many fives as a cat; he will live in all weathers,
and never be a halfpenny the worse. Those who go
to the devil in youth, with anything like a fair
chance, were probably little worth saving from the
first ; they must have been feeble fellows — creatures
made of putty and packthread, without steel or fire,
anger or true joyfulness, in their composition ; we
may sympathise with their parents, but there is not
much cause to go into mourning for themselves ;
for, to be quite honest, the weak brother is the worst
of mankind.
When the old man waggles his head and says,
'Ah, so I thought when I was your age,' he has
^ Lothair.
71