Professor Van Dyke's Lecture.

At a meeting of the Graduate Club in the Parlor of Phillips Brooks House last night. Professor Henry Van Dyke of Princeton delivered a very interesting lecture, on "Robert Louis Stevenson." Professor Van Dyke spoke of Stevenson as a stylist, a constructor of stories and as a moralist. He mentioned Stevenson's early ambition to become a writer and the desperate real with which he worked towards that end. "The lesson of Stevenson's life," he said, "is that it is a fine thing to be brave." Professor Van Dyke, in speaking of the precision in the choice of words which is to manifest in all of Stevenson's works, said: "The willingness to be satisfied with the wrong word, the wrong color, is the sign of an inferior author. A brilliant writer is the last one who can afford to be false or fatuous." He read several extracts from different works of Stevenson, including the dueling scene between the brothers in "The Master of Ballantrae," and characterized Stevenson as the writer of "the burning-glass style." He admitted that several of Stevenson's best scenes were from borrowed ideas, but said: "Originality does not lie with the man who does the thing first, but with the man who does it best."