An Adventurer in a Velvet Jacket

Thus gallantly he appears in my mind's eye when I pause in rereading one of his books and summon up a fantasm of the author,-Robert Louis Stevenson, gentleman adventurer in life and letters, his brown eyes shining in a swarthy face, his lean, long-enduring body adorned with a black-velvet jacket.

This garment is no disguise but a symbol. It is short, so as not to impede him with entangling tails. It is unconventional, as a protest against the tyranny of fashion. But it is of velvet, mark you, to match a certain niceness of choice and preference of beauty,-yes, and probably a touch of bravura,-in all its wearer's vagaries. 'Tis like the silver spurs, broad sombrero and gay handkerchief of the thoroughbred cowboy,-not an element of the dandiacal, but a tribute to romance. Strange that the most genuine of men usually have a bit of this in their composition; your only incurable _poseur_ being the fellow who affects never to pose and betrays himself by his attitude of scorn.