Note 22 — THE LETTERS OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON (continued 5)
Reading edition
21 For the actual sum, see below, p. 243.
22
“But she was more than usual calm, She did not give a single dam.”
Marjorie Fleming.
23 Of the play Deacon Brodie.
24
“Smith opens out his cauld harangues On practice and on morals.”
The Rev. George Smith of Galston, the minister thus referred to by Burns (in the Holy Fair), was a great-grandfather of Stevenson on the mother’s side; and against Stevenson himself, in his didactic moods, the passage was often quoted by his friends when they wished to tease him.
25 Afterwards changed to Alison.
26 Alluding to a kind of lofty, posturing manner of G. M.’s in mind and speech, quite different from any real insincerity.