ABSTRACT
A careful reading of A Child's Garden of Verses not only reminds one of the elasticity but also offers one of the opportunity to engage the fuller range of Robert Louis Stevenson's imagination. In particular, if one places his verses within the context of his argument with the missionary ethos voiced in the juvenile missionary magazines with which A Child's Garden of Verses often seems to be in dialogue, the flexibility, the modifications, and generosity of Stevenson's imagination become even more noticeable. As a young boy, Stevenson willingly participated in a pious household that not only took religion seriously but also respected the missionary cause. One component of the missionary consciousness that works its way into and through A Child's Garden of Verses is the persistent awareness of the presence of children in foreign lands, the sense of children being everywhere.
