The Days of a Man D903 



Carrie csted me mainly because our neighbor was the only 

 Nation in pgj-son I cvcr heard talk a Socialist agitator into 

 silence. When she got through, the ground was 

 figuratively littered with the remains of Marx, " bour- 

 geoisie," "proletariat," "class consciousness," and 

 "the mechanical interpretation of history." The 

 victor was Carrie Nation, the noted militant apostle 

 of temperance. 



In the fall of this year Howard V. Sutherland, a 

 Simnson youug Scot of San Francisco, organized "the Steven- 

 Feiiowship gQj^ Fellowship" to meet regularly on November 13, 

 the birthday of "R. L. S." The first gathering was 

 held at the unpretending Bush Street Restaurant to 

 which in 1880 Stevenson used to repair for his meager 

 meals. During those months of struggle, it will be 

 remembered, he lodged near by at No. 608, a build- 

 ing so loosely constructed that, as he once said, split- 

 ting kindling in his cheerless room shook the whole side 

 of the house. There, however, he wrote his fine appre- 

 ciation of Thoreau. As to the outlook at that time, he 

 explained in a letter to a friend: "Tomorrow I may 

 be carrying topgallant sails again, but just at present 

 I am scraping along with a jury-mast and a kind of 

 amateur rudder." 



The meal, at our request, duplicated as far as pos- 

 sible in character and price those formerly ordered by 

 Stevenson. His widow, then living in San Francisco, 

 was the guest of honor, accompanied by her sister, 

 Mrs. Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez, a clever woman 

 who had been a student of mine in Indianapolis, and 

 good Jules Simoneau, Stevenson's faithful friend and 

 landlord in Monterey. 



More recently some appreciative lover has placed 

 a memorial tablet on the old Simoneau house. A 



C 146 1 



