"He could enjoy trifles because there was to him no such thing as a trifle."

Stevenson's enormous capacity for joy flowed directly out of his profoundly religious temperament. He conceived himself as an unimportant guest at one eternal and uproarious banquet, and instead of grumbling at the soup, he accepted it with that careless gratitude that marks the baby and the real man of the world. He rode on the great galloping gift-horse of existence, with the joy of a horseman at once dexterous and reckless, and did not, like many more ambitious philosophers, nearly fall off in his desperate efforts to look the gift-horse in the mouth. His gaiety was neither the gaiety of the pagan, nor the gaiety of the bon vivant. It was the greater gaiety of the mystic. He could enjoy trifles because there was to him no such thing as a trifle. He was a child who respected his dolls because they were the images of the image of God, portraits at only two removes. He was a boy who thought his fireworks were as splendid as the stars, but it was only because he thought the stars were as youthful and as festive as the fireworks.

-October 18, 1901, Daily News