“The annual meeting of the Stevenson Society of America was held at the Memorial Cottage, Saranac Lake, Saturday, Aug. 25, 1928. An exceptionally large audience gathered on the lawns fronting the verandah so well-known to legions of Stevenson lovers, and ideal weather added its share to the success of the afternoon. At 3:10 o’clock, the president, Colonel Walter Scott, opened the ceremonies, and at his request, two pipers in the picturesque costume of the Highlands played several airs of Bonny Scotland to the great enjoyment of all present.”

— From the General Report for 1928.

Once the formalities were out of the way, Col. Scott got down to giving his annual presidential state of the society speech along with his personal thoughts on the subject of Robert Louis Stevenson, or as Scott said it:

“I cannot refrain at this time from tarrying a moment to dwell on the one in whose memory we gather … In fancy we picture Stevenson as he lived here in the winter of 1887-88, composing ‘The Master of Ballantrae’ and other works. His thoughts must have wandered frequently to the Highlands of his native land. There in the north–in the purple heather-clad hills, he had vainly sought health, and had he regained it, his wanderings possibly would not have been so extensive–who knows? …

“But Robert Louis Stevenson had a restless mind, and in his imagination he roamed over all lands and seas. And so after a few years we find him here in Saranac Lake, where the wind and weather to him, in his enfeebled state, was as black as the land that gave him birth. And then fate forces him to travel again and again, until the end comes in the far South Seas, just in the place and manner he dreamed of …”

Col. Scott spent a few moments speculating on Stevenson’s philosophy of life which “assumed a broad attitude that was not confined to the narrow limits of any one country … possessed a faculty of human penetration … coupled with a sympathetic understanding of fate’s vicissitudes …

“His great mind translated his personality objectively, for as he said in discussing Robert Burns, ‘To write with authority about another man we must have fellow-feeling and some common ground of experience with our subject.’ No essay on the great Scottish poet displays a keener insight of the high lights and shadows of this great genius than Stevenson’s ‘Men and Books.’ His quotation from Burns is significant:

‘Here’s freedom to him that would read;

Here’s freedom to him that would write;

There’s none ever feared that the truth should be heard,

But them whom the truth would indite.'”

Col. Scott’s talking wandered into less familiar territory when he praised the fourth of the twelve essays RLS wrote in Saranac Lake. Pulvis et Umbra–“Dust and Shadow” is Stevenson’s personal opinions and thoughts about the subject of evolution which was still a new idea at the time and very controversial. Col. Scott said it is “One of the finest of Stevenson’s essays, penned right here in this quiet spot.” After quoting from it, Scott concluded that “Stevenson’s conception of life in its infinite variety, the relation of all animate forms to the incomprehensible cosmos, the mysterious urge to live and create, from insect to man, is a masterpiece.”

Col./President Walter Scott was a generous and wealthy man. Following his address, he presented the Stevenson Society with several more RLS “sacred relics” from his own collection, including two signed checks from a London bank, 1887, and the “Original Manuscript Music,” composed by Stevenson for his penny whistle entitled “Nights of Vailima,” preserved in a crimson moire silk wrapper.

The next guest speaker to stand was a person of consequence himself. Col. Walter Scott proudly introduced his friend, Rabbi Stephen Samuel Wise, Reform rabbi; a leader of the U.S. Zionist movement and a civic activist who influenced the development of Reform Judaism in the United States. At the time of his talk at Baker’s, he was Rabbi of the Free Synagogue, New York, and President of the Jewish Institute of Religion. He began by saying:

“Genius has the habit of making memorable any place it visits, of lending enchantment to any spot it touches. Therefore it is that Saranac is and long will be inseparably associated with the name and genius of Robert Louis Stevenson. So fare all the widely scattered homes of Stevenson, whether in his native land or on the continent of Europe, here amid the Adirondack hills and in the isles of the remotest seas. …”

“I use the term ‘shrine’–we hold this place for the pilgrimage of whatsoever soul bravely fights or heroically endures. Endurance, not resignation nor surrender! For his was the formation of unrelenting endurance, not the surrender of hopeless self-annulment … Robert Louis Stevenson was not a great writer, he was a great person. Some writers become great personages: this great person became or was a writer … Robert Louis Stevenson and courage are become synonymous. Is it not true that many of earth’s greatest are somehow simply described by a word? Shakespeare,–greatness! Milton,–sublimity! Wordsworth,–nobleness! Shelley,–beauty! Keats,–melody! Browning,–wisdom! Stevenson,–courage!”

The program of the annual meeting of the Stevenson Society was about to finish when Dr. Lawrason Brown, the vice president, interrupted by asking President Scott to go to the museum entrance at the end of the veranda and remove one of the flags hung on the wall. Much to his surprise, he had unveiled a bronze plaque bearing this inscription which some visitors like to read out loud to this day:

“This house where Robert Louis Stevenson dwelt during the winter of 1887-88 has been preserved to us largely through the efforts of Colonel Walter Scott, to whom the Stevenson Society is forever grateful.”