Chapter VII: Front Matter (7)

I must close the list; one only and the best--the most endeared of them all--Dr. Heugh. He was, in mental constitution and temper, perhaps more unlike my father than any of the others I have mentioned. His was essentially a practical understanding; he was a man of action, a man for men more than for man, the curious reverse in this of my father. He delighted in public life, had a native turn for affairs, for all that society needs and demands,--clear-headed, ready, intrepid, adroit; with a fine temper, but keen and honest, with an argument and a question and a joke for every one; not disputatious, but delighting in a brisk argument, fonder of wrestling than of fencing, but ready for action; not much of a long shot, always keeping his eye on the immediate, the possible, the attainable, but in all this guided by genuine principle, and the finest honor and exactest truth. He excelled in the conduct of public business, saw his way clear, made other men see theirs, was forever getting the Synod out of difficulties and confusions, by some clear, tidy, conclusive "motion;" and then his speaking, so easy and bright and pithy, manly and gentlemanly, grave when it should be, never when it should not--mobile, fearless, rapid, brilliant as Saladin--his silent, pensive, impassioned and emphatic friend was more like the lion-hearted Richard, with his heavy mace; he might miss, but let him hit, and there needed no repetition. Each admired the other; indeed Dr. Heugh's love of my father was quite romantic; and though they were opposed on several great public questions, such as the Apocrypha controversy, the Atonement question at its commencement; and though they were both of them too keen and too honest to mince matters or be mealy-mouthed, they never misunderstood each other, never had a shadow of estrangement, so that our Paul and Barnabas, though their contentions were sometimes sharp enough, never "departed asunder;" indeed they loved each other the longer the more.

Take him all in all, as a friend, as a gentleman, as a Christian, as a citizen, I never knew a man so thoroughly delightful as Dr. Heugh. Others had more of this or more of that, but there was a symmetry, a compactness, a sweetness, a true _delightfulness_ about him I can remember in no one else. No man, with so much temptation to be heady and high-minded, sarcastic, and managing, from his overflowing wit and talent, was ever more natural, more honest, or more considerate, indeed tender-hearted. He was full of animal spirits and of fun, and one of the best wits and jokers I ever knew; and such an asker of questions, of posers! We children had a pleasing dread of that nimble, sharp, exact man, who made us explain and name everything. Of Scotch stories he had as many original ones as would make a second volume for Dean Ramsay. How well I remember the very corner of the room in Biggar manse, forty years ago, when from him I got the first shock and relish of humor; became conscious of mental tickling; of a word being made to carry double, and being all the lighter of it. It is an old story now, but it was new then; a big, perspiring countryman rushed into the Black Bull coach-office, and holding the door, shouted, "Are yir insides a' oot?" This was my first tasting of the flavor of a joke.

Had Dr. Heugh, instead of being the admirable clergyman he was, devoted himself to public civil life, and gone into Parliament, he would have taken a high place as a debater, a practical statesman and patriot. He had many of the best qualities of Canning, and our own Premier, with purer and higher qualities than either. There is no one our church should be more proud of than of this beloved and excellent man, the holiness and humility, the jealous, godly fear in whose nature was not known fully even to his friends, till he was gone, when his private daily self-searchings and prostrations before his Master and Judge were for the first time made known. There are few characters, _both sides_ of which are so unsullied, so pure, and without reproach.

I am back at Biggar at the old sacramental times; I see and hear my grandfather, or Mr. Horne of Braehead, Mr. Leckie of Peebles, Mr. Harper of Lanark, as inveterate in argument as he was warm in heart, Mr. Comrie of Penicuik, with his keen, Voltaire-like face, and much of that unhappy and unique man's wit, and sense, and perfection of expression, without his darker and baser qualities. I can hear their hearty talk, can see them coming and going between the meetinghouse and the _Tent_ on the side of the burn, and then the Monday dinner, and the cheerful talk, and the many clerical stories and pleasantries, and their going home on their hardy little horses, Mr. Comrie leaving his curl-papers till the next solemnity, and leaving also some joke of his own, clear and compact as a diamond, and as cutting.

I am in Rose Street on the monthly lecture, the church crammed, passages and pulpit stairs. Exact to a minute, James Chalmers--the old soldier and beadle, slim, meek, but incorruptible by proffered half crowns from ladies who thus tried to get in before the doors opened--appears, and all the people in that long pew rise up, and he, followed by his minister, erect and engrossed, walks in along the seat, and they struggle up to the pulpit. We all know what he is to speak of; he looks troubled even to distress;--it is the matter of Uriah the Hittite. He gives out the opening verses of the 51st Psalm, and offering up a short and abrupt prayer, which every one takes to himself, announces his miserable and dreadful subject, _fencing_ it, as it were, in a low, penetrating voice, daring any one of us to think an evil thought; there was little need at that time of the warning,--he infused his own intense, pure spirit, into us all.

He then told the story without note or comment, only personating each actor in the tragedy with extraordinary effect, above all, the manly, loyal, simple-hearted soldier. I can recall the shudder of that multitude as of one man when he read, "And it came to pass in the morning, that David wrote a letter to Joab, and sent it by the hand of Uriah. And he wrote in the letter, saying, Set ye Uriah in the forefront of the hottest battle, and retire ye from him, that he may be smitten and die." And then, after a long and utter silence, his exclaiming, "Is this the man according to God's own heart? Yes, it is; we must believe that both are true." Then came Nathan. "There were two men in one city; the one rich, and the other poor. The rich man had exceeding many flocks and herds; but the poor man had nothing, save one little ewe lamb"--and all that exquisite, that divine fable--ending, like a thunder-clap, with "Thou art the man!" Then came the retribution, so awfully exact and thorough,--the misery of the child's death; that brief tragedy of the brother and sister, more terrible than anything in AEschylus, in Dante, or in Ford; then the rebellion of Absalom, with its hideous dishonor, and his death, and the king covering his face, and crying in a loud voice, "O my son Absalom! O Absalom! my son! my son!"--and David's psalm, "Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving-kindness; according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions,"--then closing with, "Yes; 'when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin; and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death. Do not err,' do not stray, do not transgress ({me planasthe}),[30] 'my beloved brethren,' it is first 'earthly, then sensual, then devilish;'" he shut the book, and sent us all away terrified, shaken, and humbled, like himself.

[30] James i. 15, 16. It is plain that "do not err" should have
been in verse 15th.

I would fain say a few words on my father's last illness, or rather on what led to it, and I wish you and others in the ministry would take to heart, as matter of immediate religious duty, much of what I am going to say. My father was a seven months' child, and lay, I believe, for a fortnight in black wool, undressed, doing little but breathe and sleep, not capable of being fed. He continued all his life slight in make, and not robust in health, though lively, and capable of great single efforts. His attendance upon his mother must have saddened his body as well as his mind, and made him willing and able to endure, in spite of his keen and ardent spirit, the sedentary life he in the main led. He was always a very small eater, and nice in his tastes, easily put off from his food by any notion. He therefore started on the full work of life with a finer and more delicate mechanism than a man's ought to be, indeed, in these respects he was much liker a woman; and being very soon "placed," he had little travelling, and little of that tossing about the world, which in the transition from youth to manhood, hardens the frame as well as supples it. Though delicate, he was almost never ill. I do not remember, till near the close of his life, his ever being in bed a day.

From his nervous system, and his brain predominating steadily over the rest of his body, he was habitually excessive in his professional work. As to quantity, as to quality, as to manner and expression, he flung away his life without stint every Sabbath-day, his sermons being laboriously prepared, loudly mandated, and at great expense of body and mind, and then delivered with the utmost vehemence and rapidity. He was quite unconscious of the state he worked himself into, and of the loud piercing voice in which he often spoke. This I frequently warned him about, as being, I knew, injurious to himself, and often painful to his hearers, and his answer always was, that he was utterly unaware of it; and thus it continued to the close, and very sad it was to me who knew the peril, and saw the coming end, to listen to his noble, rich, persuasive, imperative appeals, and to know that the surplus of power, if retained, would, by God's blessing, retain him, while the effect on his people would, I am sure, not have lost, but in some respects have gained, for much of the discourse which was shouted and sometimes screamed at the full pitch of his keen voice, was of a kind to be better rendered in his deep, quiet, settled tones. This, and the great length of his public services, I knew he himself felt, when too late, had injured him, and many a smile he had at my proposal to have a secret sub-congregational string from him to me in the back seat, to be authoritatively twitched when I knew he had done enough; but this string was never pulled, even in his mind.

He went on in this expensive life, sleeping very little, and always lightly, eating little, never walking except of necessity; little in company, when he would have eaten more and been, by the power of social relish, made likelier to get the full good out of his food; never diverting his mind by any change but that of one book or subject for another; and every time that any strong affliction came on him, as when made twice a widower, or at his daughter's death, or from such an outrage upon his entire nature and feelings as the Libel, then his delicate machinery was shaken and damaged, not merely by the first shock, but even more by that unrelenting self-command by which he terrified his body into instant submission. Thus it was, and thus it ever must be, if the laws of our bodily constitution, laid down by Him who knows our frame, and from whom our substance is not hid, are set at nought, knowingly or not--if knowingly, the act is so much the more spiritually bad--but if not, it is still punished with the same unerring nicety, the same commensurate meting out of the penalty, and paying "in full tale," as makes the sun to know his time, and splits an erring planet into fragments, driving it into space "with hideous ruin and combustion." It is a pitiful and a sad thing to say, but if my father had not been a prodigal in a true but very different meaning, if he had not spent his substance, the portion of goods that fell to him, the capital of life given him by God, in what we must believe to have been needless and therefore preventable excess of effort, we might have had him still with us, shining more and more, and he and they who were with him would have been spared those two years of the valley of the shadow, with its sharp and steady pain, its fallings away of life, its longing for the grave, its sleepless nights and days of weariness and languor, the full expression of which you will find nowhere but in the Psalms and in Job.

I have said that though delicate he was never ill: this was all the worse for him, for, odd as it may seem, many a man's life is lengthened by a sharp illness; and this in several ways. In the first place, he is laid up, out of the reach of all external mischief and exertion, he is like a ship put in dock for repairs; time is gained. A brisk fever clarifies the entire man; if it is beaten and does not beat, it is like cleaning a chimney by setting it on fire; it is perilous but thorough. Then the effort to throw off the disease often quickens and purifies and corroborates the central powers of life; the flame burns more clearly; there is a cleanness, so to speak, about all the wheels of life. Moreover, it is a warning, and makes a man meditate on his bed, and resolve to pull up; and it warns his friends, and likewise, if he is a clergyman, his people, who if their minister is always with them, never once think he can be ever anything but as able as he is.

Such a pause, such a breathing-time my father never got during that part of his life and labors when it would have availed most, and he was an old man in years, before he was a regular patient of any doctor. He was during life subject to sudden headaches, affecting his memory and eyesight, and even his speech; these attacks were, according to the thoughtless phrase of the day, called bilious; that is, he was sick, and was relieved by a blue pill and smart medicine. Their true seat was in the brain; the liver suffered because the brain was ill, and sent no nervous energy to it, or poisoned what it did send. The sharp racking pain in the forehead was the cry of suffering from the anterior lobes, driven by their master to distraction, and turning on him wild with weakness and fear and anger. It was well they did cry out; in some brains (large ones) they would have gone on dumb to sudden and utter ruin, as in apoplexy or palsy; but he did not know, and no one told him their true meaning, and he set about seeking for the outward cause in some article of food, in some recent and quite inadequate cause.

He used, with a sort of odd shame and distress, to ask me why it was that he was subjected to so much suffering from what he called the lower and ignoble regions of his body; and I used to explain to him that he had made them suffer by long years of neglect, and that they were now having their revenge, and in their own way I have often found, that the more the nervous centres are employed in those offices of thought and feeling the most removed from material objects,--the more the nervous energy of the entire nature is concentrated, engrossed, and used up in such offices,--so much the more and therefore, are those organs of the body which preside over that organic life, common to ourselves and the lowest worm, defrauded of their necessary nervous food,--and being in the organic and not in the animal department, and having no voice to tell their wants or wrongs, till they wake up and annoy their neighbors who have a voice, that is, who are sensitive to pain, they may have been long ill before they come into the sphere of consciousness. This is the true reason--along with want of purity and change of air, want of exercise,[31] want of shifting the work of the body--why clergymen, men of letters, and all men of intense mental application, are so liable to be affected with indigestion, constipation, lumbago, and lowness of spirits, _melancholia_--black bile. The brain may not give way for long, because for a time the law of exercise strengthens it; it is fed high, gets the best of everything, of blood and nervous pabulum, and then men have a joy in the victorious work of their brain, and it has a joy of its own, too, which deludes and misleads.

[31] "The youth Story was in all respects healthy, and even
robust; he died of overwork, or rather, as I understand, of
a two years' almost total want of exercise, which it was
impossible to induce him to take.'--_Arnold's Report to the
Committee of Council on Education_, 1860.

All this happened to my father. He had no formal disease when he died--no structural change; his sleep and his digestion would have been quite sufficient for life even up to the last; the mechanism was entire, but the motive-power was gone--it was expended. The silver cord was not so much loosed as relaxed. The golden bowl, the pitcher at the fountain, the wheel at the cistern, were not so much broken as emptied and stayed. The clock had run down before its time, and there was no one but He who first wound it up and set it who could wind it up again; and this He does not do, because it is His law--an express injunction from Him--that, having measured out to his creatures each his measure of life, and left him to the freedom of his own will and the regulation of his reason, He also leaves him to reap as he sows.

Thus it was that my father's illness was not so much a disease as a long death; life ebbing away, consciousness left entire, the certain issue never out of sight. This, to a man of my father's organization--with a keen relish for life, and its highest pleasures and energies, sensitive to impatience, and then over-sensitive of his own impatience; cut to the heart with the long watching and suffering of those he loved, who, after all, could do so little for him; with a nervous system easily sunk, and by its strong play upon his mind darkening and saddening his most central beliefs, shaking his most solid principles, tearing and terrifying his tenderest affections: his mind free and clear, ready for action if it had the power, eager to be in its place in the work of the world and of its Master, to have to spend two long years in this ever-descending road--here was a combination of positive and negative suffering not to be thought of even now, when it is all sunk under that "far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory."

He often spoke to me freely about his health, went into it with the fearlessness, exactness, and persistency of his nature; and I never witnessed, or hope to witness, anything more affecting than when, after it had been dawning upon him, he apprehended the true secret of his death. He was deeply humbled, felt that he had done wrong to himself, to his people, to us all, to his faithful and long-suffering Master; and he often said, with a dying energy lighting up his eye, and nerving his voice and gesture, that if it pleased God to let him again speak in his old place, he would not only proclaim again, and, he hoped, more simply and more fully, the everlasting gospel to lost man, but proclaim also the gospel of God to the body, the religious and Christian duty and privilege of living in obedience to the divine laws of health. He was delighted when I read to him, and turned to this purpose that wonderful passage of St. Paul--"For the body is not one member, but many. If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing? if the whole were hearing, where were the smelling? But now hath God set the members every one of them in the body, as it hath pleased him. And the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee; nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you. Nay, much more those members of the body, which seem to be more feeble, are necessary;" summing it all up in words with life and death in them--"That there should be no schism in the body; but that the members should have the same care one for another. And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or one member be honored, all the members rejoice with it."

The lesson from all this is, Attend to your bodies, study their structure, functions, and laws. This does not at all mean that you need be an anatomist, or go deep into physiology, or the doctrines of prevention and cure. Not only has each organism a resident doctor, placed there by Him who can thus heal all our diseases; but this doctor, if watched and waited on, informs any man or woman of ordinary sense what things to do, and what things not to do. And I would have you, who, I fear, not unfrequently sin in the same way, and all our ardent, self-sacrificing young ministers, to reflect whether, after destroying themselves and dying young, they have lost or gained. It is said that God raises up others in our place. God gives you no title to say this. Men--such men as I have in my mind--are valuable to God in proportion to the time they are here. They are the older, the better, the riper and richer, and more enriching. Nothing will make up for this absolute loss of life. For there is something which every man who is a good workman is gaining every year just because he is older, and this nothing can replace. Let a man remain on his ground, say a country parish, during half a century or more--let him be every year getting fuller and sweeter in the knowledge of God and man, in utterance and in power--can the power of that man for good over all his time, and especially towards its close, be equalled by that of three or four young, and, it may be, admirable men, who have been succeeding each other's untimely death, during the same space of time? It is against all spiritual, as well as all simple arithmetic, to say so.

You have spoken of my father's prayers. They were of two kinds; the one, formal, careful, systematic, and almost stereotyped, remarkable for fulness and compression of thought; sometimes too manifestly the result of study, and sometimes not purely prayer, but more of the nature of a devotional and even argumentative address; the other, as in the family, short, simple, and varied. He used to tell of his master, Dr. Lawson, reproving him, in his honest but fatherly way, as they were walking home from the Hall. My father had in his prayer the words, "that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death,--that is, the devil." The old man, leaning on his favorite pupil, said, "John, my man, you need not have said '_that is the devil_;' you might have been sure that _He_ knew whom you meant." My father, in theory, held that a mixture of formal, fixed prayer, in fact, a liturgy, along with _extempore_ prayer, was the right thing. As you observe, many of his passages in prayer, all who were in the habit of hearing him could anticipate, such as "the enlightening, enlivening, sanctifying, and comforting influences of the good Spirit," and many others. One in especial you must remember; it was only used on very solemn occasions, and curiously unfolds his mental peculiarities; it closed his prayer--"And now, unto Thee, O Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, the one Jehovah and our God, we would--as is most meet--with the church on earth and the church in heaven, ascribe all honor and glory, dominion and majesty, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen." Nothing could be liker him than the interjection, "as is most meet." Sometimes his abrupt, short statements in the Synod were very striking. On one occasion, Mr. James Morison having stated his views as to prayer very strongly, denying that a sinner _can_ pray, my father, turning to the Moderator, said--"Sir, let a man feel himself to be a sinner, and, for anything the universe of creatures can do for him, hopelessly lost,--let him feel this, sir, and let him get a glimpse of the Saviour, and all the eloquence and argument of Mr. Morison will not keep that man from crying out, 'God be merciful to me a sinner.' That, sir, is prayer--that is acceptable prayer."

There must be, I fear, now and then an apparent discrepancy between you and me, especially as to the degree of mental depression which at times overshadowed my father's nature. _You_ will understand this, and I hope our readers will make allowance for it. Some of it is owing to my constitutional tendency to overstate, and much of it to my having had perhaps more frequent, and even more private, insights into this part of his life. But such inconsistency as that I speak of--the co-existence of a clear, firm faith, a habitual sense of God and of his infinite mercy, the living a life of faith, as if it was in his organic and inner life, more than in his sensational and outward--is quite compatible with that tendency to distrust himself, that bodily darkness and mournfulness, which at times came over him. Any one who knows "what a piece of work is man;" how composite, how varying, how inconsistent human nature is, that each of us are

"Some several men, all in an hour,"

--will not need to be told to expect, or how to harmonize these differences of mood. You see this in that wonderful man, the apostle Paul, the true typical fulness, the _humanness_, so to speak, of whose nature comes out in such expressions of opposites as these--"By honor and dishonor, by evil report and good report: as deceivers, and yet true; as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and, behold, we live; as chastened, and not killed; as sorrowful, yet alway rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things."

I cannot, and after your impressive and exact history of his last days, I need not say anything of the close of those long years of suffering, active and passive, and that slow ebbing of life; the body, without help or hope, feeling its doom steadily though slowly drawing on; the mind mourning for its suffering friend, companion, and servant; mourning also, sometimes, that it must be "unclothed," and take its flight all alone into the infinite unknown; dying daily, not in the heat of fever, or in the insensibility or lethargy of paralytic disease, but having the mind calm and clear, and the body conscious of its own decay,--dying, as it were, in cold blood. One thing I must add. That morning when you were obliged to leave, and when "cold obstruction's apathy" had already begun its reign--when he knew us, and that was all, and when he followed us with his dying and loving eyes, but could not speak--the end came; and then, as through life, his will asserted itself supreme in death. With that love of order and decency which was a law of his life, he deliberately composed himself, placing his body at rest, as if setting his house in order before leaving it, and then closed his eyes and mouth, so that his last look--the look his body carried to the grave and faced dissolution in--was that of sweet, dignified self-possession.

I have made this letter much too long, and have said many things in it I never intended saying, and omitted much I had hoped to be able to say. But I must end.

Yours ever affectionately,

J. BROWN.

"_MYSTIFICATIONS._"[32]

[32] Edinburgh: printed privately, 1859.

"_Health to the auld wife, and weel mat she be,
That busks her fause rock wi' the lint o' the lee (_lie_),
Whirling her spindle and twisting the twine,
Wynds aye the richt pirn into the richt line._"

Those who knew the best of Edinburgh society eight-and-thirty years ago--and when was there ever a better than that best?--must remember the personations of an old Scottish gentlewoman by Miss Stirling Graham, one of which, when Lord Jeffrey was victimized, was famous enough to find its way into _Blackwood_, but in an incorrect form.

Miss Graham's friends have for years urged her to print for them her notes of these pleasant records of the harmless and heart-easing mirth of bygone times; to this she has at last assented, and the result is this entertaining, curious, and beautiful little quarto, in which her friends will recognize the strong understanding and goodness, the wit and invention, and fine _pawky_ humor of the much-loved and warmhearted representative of Viscount Dundee--the terrible Clavers.[33] They will recall that blithe and winning face, sagacious and sincere, that kindly, cheery voice, that rich and quiet laugh, that mingled sense and sensibility, which all met, and still, to our happiness, meet in her, who, with all her gifts and keen perception of the odd, and power of embodying it, never gratified her consciousness of these powers, or ever played

"Her quips and cranks and wanton wiles,"

so as to give pain to any human being.

[33] Miss Graham's genealogy in connection with Claverhouse--the
same who was killed at Killiecrankie--is as follows:--John
Graham of Claverhouse married the Honorable Jean Cochrane,
daughter of William Lord Cochrane, eldest son of the first
Earl of Dundonald. Their only son, an infant, died December
1689. David Graham, his brother, fought at Killiecrankie,
and was outlawed in 1690--died without issue--when the
representation of the family devolved on his cousin, David
Graham of Duntrune. Alexander Graham of Duntrune died 1782;
and on the demise of his last surviving son, Alexander, in
1804, the property was inherited equally by his four
surviving sisters, Anne, Amelia, Clementina, and Alison.
Amelia, who married Patrick Stirling, Esq., of Pittendreich,
was her mother. Clementina married Captain Gavin Drummond of
Keltie; their only child was Clementina Countess of Airlie,
and mother of the present Earl.

The title of this memorial is _Mystifications_, and in the opening letter to her dear kinswoman and life-long friend, Mrs. Gillies, widow of Lord Gillies, she thus tells her story:--

DUNTRUNE, _April 1859._

MY DEAREST MRS. GILLIES,

_To you and the friends who have partaken in these
"Mystifications," I dedicate this little volume, trusting that,
after a silence of forty years, its echoes may awaken many
agreeable memorials of a society that has nearly passed away._

_I have been asked if I had no remorse in ridiculing
singularities of character, or practising deceptions;--certainly
not._

_There was no personal ridicule or mimicry of any living
creature, but merely the personation or type of a bygone class,
that had survived the fashion of its day._

_It was altogether a fanciful existence, developing itself
according to circumstances, or for the amusement of a select
party, among whom the announcement of a stranger lady, an
original, led to no suspicion of deception. No one ever took
offence: indeed it generally elicited the finest individual
traits of sympathy in the minds of the dupes, especially in the
case of Mr. Jeffrey, whose sweet-tempered kindly nature
manifested itself throughout the whole of the tiresome interview
with the law-loving Lady Pitlyal._

_No one enjoyed her eccentricities more than he did, or more
readily devised the arrangement of a similar scene for the
amusement of our mutual friends._

_The cleverest people were the easiest mystified, and when once
the deception took place, it mattered not how arrant the
nonsense or how exaggerated the costume. Indeed, children and
dogs were the only detectives._

_I often felt so identified with the character, so charmed with
the pleasure manifested by my audience, that it became painful
to lay aside the veil, and descend again into the humdrum
realities of my own self._

_These personations never lost me a friend; on the contrary,
they originated friendships that cease only with life._

_The Lady Pitlyal's course is run; she bequeaths to you these
reminiscences of beloved friends and pleasant meetings._

_And that the blessing of God may descend on "each and all of
you," is the fervent prayer of her kinswoman and executrix,_

_CLEMENTINA STIRLING GRAHAM._

I now beg to "convey," as Pistol delicately calls it, or as we on our side the Border would say, to "lift," enough of this unique volume to make my readers hunger for the whole.

MRS. RAMSAY SPELDIN.

Another evening Miss Guthrie requested me to introduce my old
lady to Captain Alexander Lindsay, a son of the late Laird of
Kinblethmont, and brother to the present Mr. Lindsay Carnegie,
and Mr. Sandford, the late Sir Daniel Sandford.

She came as a Mrs. Ramsay Speldin, an old sweetheart of the
laird's, and was welcomed by Mrs. Guthrie as a friend of the
family. The young people hailed her as a perfectly delightful
old lady, and an original of the pure Scottish character, and to
the laird she was endeared by a thousand pleasing recollections.

He placed her beside himself on the sofa, and they talked of the
days gone by--before the green parks of Craigie were redeemed
from the muir of Gotterston, and ere there was a tree planted
between the auld house of Craigie and the Castle of Claypotts.

She spoke of the "gude auld times, when the laird of Fintry
widna gie his youngest dochter to Abercairney, but tell'd him to
tak them as God had gien them to him, or want."

"And do you mind," she continued, "the grand ploys we had at the
Middleton; and hoo Mrs. Scott of Gilhorn used to grind lilts out
o' an auld kist to wauken her visitors i' the mornin'.

"And some o' them didna like it sair, tho' nane o' them had
courage to tell her sae, but Anny Graham o' Duntrune.

"'Lord forgie ye,' said Mrs. Scott, 'ye'll no gae to heaven, if
ye dinna like music;' but Anny was never at a loss for an
answer, and she said, 'Mrs. Scott--heaven's no the place I tak
it to be, if there be auld wives in 't playing on hand-organs.'"

Many a story did Mrs. Ramsay tell. The party drew their chairs
close to the sofa, and many a joke she related, till the room
rung again with the merriment, and the laird, in ecstasy, caught
her round the waist, exclaiming "Oh! ye are a canty wifie."

The strangers seemed to think so too; they absolutely hung upon
her, and she danced reels, first with the one, and then with the
other, till the entrance of a servant with the newspapers
produced a seasonable calm.

They lay, however, untouched upon the table till Mrs. Ramsay
requested some one to read over the claims that were putting in
for the King's coronation, and see if there was any mention of
hers.

"What is your claim?" said Mr. Sandford.

"To pyke the King's teeth," was the reply.

"You will think it very singular," said Mr. Guthrie, "that I
never heard of it before; will you tell us how it originated?"

"It was in the time of James the First," said she, "that monarch
cam to pay a visit to the monks of Arbroath, and they brought
him to Ferryden to eat a fish dinner at the house o' ane o' my
forefathers. The family name, ye ken, was Spelden, and the dried
fish was ca'd after them.

"The king was well satisfied wi' a' thing that was done to honor
him. He was a very polished prince, and when he had eaten his
dinner he turned round to the lady and sought a preen to pyke
his teeth.

"And the lady, she took a fish bane and wipit it, and gae it to
the king; and after he had cleaned his teeth wi' it, he said,
'_They're weel pykit._'

"And henceforth, continued he, the Speldins of Ferryden shall
pyke the king's teeth at the coronation. And it shall be done
wi' a fish-bone, and a pearl out o' the Southesk on the end of
it. And their crest shall be a lion's head wi' the teeth
displayed, and the motto shall be _weel pykit_."

Mr. Sandford read over the claims, but there was no notice given
of the Speldins.

"We maun just hae patience," said Mrs. Ramsay, "and nae doubt it
will appear in the next newspaper."

Some one inquired who was the present representative?

"It's me," replied Mrs. Ramsay Speldin; "and I mean to perform
the office mysel'. The estate wad hae been mine too, had it
existed; but Neptune, ye ken, is an ill neighbor, and the sea
has washed it a' away but a sand bunker or twa, and the house I
bide in at Ferryden."

At supper every one was eager to have a seat near Mrs. Ramsay
Speldin. She had a universal acquaintance, and she even knew Mr.
Sandford's mother, when he told her that her name was Catherine
Douglas. Mr. Sandford had in his own mind composed a letter to
Sir Walter Scott, which was to have been written and despatched
on the morrow, giving an account of this fine specimen of the
true Scottish character whom he had met in the county of Angus.

We meant to carry on the deception next morning, but the laird
was too happy for concealment. Before the door closed on the
good-night of the ladies, he had disclosed the secret, and
before we reached the top of the stairs, the gentlemen were
scampering at our heels like a pack of hounds in full cry.

Here are at random some extracts from the others:--

Mr. Jeffrey now inquired what the people in her part of the
country thought of the trial of the Queen. She could not tell
him, but she would say what she herself had remarked on siclike
proceedings: "Tak' a wreath of snaw, let it be never so white,
and wash it through clean water, it will no come out so pure as
it gaed in, far less the dirty dubs the poor Queen has been
drawn through."

Mr. Russell inquired if she possessed any relics of Prince
Charles from the time he used to spin with the lasses:--

"Yes," she said, "I have a _flech_ that loupit aff him upon my
aunty, the Lady Brax, when she was helping him on wi' his
short-gown; my aunty rowed it up in a sheet of white paper, and
she keepit it in the tea canister, and she ca'd it aye the
King's Flech; and the laird, honest man, when he wanted a cup of
gude tea, sought aye a cup of the _Prince's mixture_." This
produced peals of laughter, and her ladyship laughed as heartily
as any of them. When somewhat composed again, she looked across
the table to Mr. Clerk, and offered to let him see it. "It is
now set on the pivot of my watch, and a' the warks gae round the
_flech_ in place of turning on a diamond."

Lord Gillies thought this flight would certainly betray her, and
remarked to Mr. Clerk that the flea must be painted on the
watch, but Mr. Clerk said he had known of relics being kept of
the Prince quite as extraordinary as a flea; that Mr. Murray of
Simprim had a pocket-handkerchief in which Prince Charles had
blown his nose.

The Lady Pitlyal said her daughter did not value these things,
and that she was resolved to leave it as a legacy to the
Antiquarian Society.

Holmehead was rather amused with her originality, though he had
not forgotten the attack. He said he would try if she was a real
Jacobite, and he called out, "Madam, I am going to propose a
toast for ye!

"May the Scotch Thistle choke the Hanoverian Horse."

"I wish I binna among the Whigs," she said.

"And whare wad ye be sae weel?" retorted he.

"They murdered Dundee's son at Glasgow."

"There was nae great skaith," he replied; "but ye maun drink my
toast in a glass of this cauld punch, if ye be a true Jacobite."

"Aweel, aweel," said the Lady Pitlyal; "as my auld friend Lady
Christian Bruce was wont to say, 'The best way to get the better
of temptation is just to yield to it;'" and as she nodded to the
toast and emptied the glass, Holmehead swore
exultingly--"_Faith, she's true!_"

Supper passed over, and the carriages were announced. The Lady
Pitlyal took her leave with Mrs. Gillies.

Next day the town rang with the heiress of Pitlyal. Mr. W. Clerk
said he had never met with such an extraordinary old lady, "for
not only is she amusing herself, but my brother John is like to
expire, when I relate her stories at second-hand."

He talked of nothing else for a week after, but the heiress, and
the flea, and the rent-roll, and the old turreted house of
Pitlyal, till at last his friends thought it would be right to
undeceive him; but that was not so easily done, for when the
Lord Chief-Commissioner Adam hinted that it might be Miss
Stirling, he said that was impossible, for Miss Stirling was
sitting by the old lady the whole of the evening.

Here is a bit of Sir Walter--

Turning to Sir Walter, "I am sure you had our laird in your e'e
when you drew the character of Monkbarns."

"No," replied Sir Walter, "but I had in my eye a very old and
respected friend of my own, and one with whom, I daresay you,
Mrs. Arbuthnott, were acquainted--the late Mr. George Constable
of Wallace, near Dundee."

"I kenned him weel," said Mrs. Arbuthnott, "and his twa sisters
that lived wi' him, Jean and Christian, and I've been in the
blue-chamber of his _Hospitium_; but I think," she continued,
"our laird is the likest to Monkbarns o' the twa. He's at the
Antiquarian Society the night, presenting a great curiosity that
was found in a quarry of mica slate in the hill at the back of
Balwylie. He's sair taken up about it, and puzzled to think what
substance it may be; but James Dalgetty, wha's never at a loss
either for the name or the nature of onything under the sun,
says it's just Noah's auld wig that blew aff yon time he put his
head out of the window of the ark to look after his corbie
messenger."

James Dalgetty and his opinion gave subject of much merriment to
the company, but Doctor Coventry thought there was nothing so
very ludicrous in the remark, for in that kind of slate there
are frequently substances found resembling hairs.

Lord Gillies presented Doctor Coventry to Mrs. Arbuthnott, as
the well-known professor of agriculture, and they entered on a
conversation respecting soils. She described those of Balwylie,
and the particular properties of the _Surroch Park_, which James
Dalgetty curses every time it's spoken about, and says, "it
greets a' winter, and girns a' simmer."

The doctor rubbed his hands with delight, and said that was the
most perfect description of cold wet land he had ever heard of;
and Sir Walter expressed a wish to cultivate the acquaintance of
James Dalgetty, and extorted a promise from Mrs. Arbuthnott that
she would visit Abbotsford, and bring James with her. "I have a
James Dalgetty of my own," continued Sir Walter, "that governs
me just as yours does you."

Lady Ann and Mr. Wharton Duff and their daughter were announced,
and introduced to Mrs. Arbuthnott.

At ten, Sir Walter and Miss Scott took leave, with a promise
that they should visit each other, and bending down to the ear
of Mrs. Arbuthnott, Sir Walter addressed her in these words:
"Awa! awa! the deil's ower grit wi' you."

* * * * *

And now are we not all the better for this pleasantry? so womanly, so genial, so rich, and so without a sting,--such a true diversion, with none of the sin of effort or of mere cleverness; and how it takes us into the midst of the strong-brained and strong-hearted men and women of that time! what an atmosphere of sense and good-breeding and kindliness! And then the Scotch! cropping out everywhere as blithe, and expressive, and unexpected as a gowan or sweet-briar rose, with an occasional thistle, sturdy, erect, and bristling with _Nemo me_. Besides the deeper and general interest of these _Mystifications_, in their giving, as far as I know, a unique specimen of true personation--distinct from acting--I think it a national good to let our youngsters read, and, as it were, hear the language which our gentry and judges and men of letters spoke not long ago, and into which such books as Dean Ramsay's and this are breathing the breath of its old life. Was there ever anything better or so good, said of a stiff clay, than that it "girns (grins) a' simmer, and greets (weeps) a' winter?"

"_OH, I'M WAT, WAT!_"

_The father of the Rev. Mr. Steven of Largs, was the son of a
farmer, who lived next farm to Mossgiel. When a boy of eight, he
found "Robbie" who was a great friend of his, and of all the
children, engaged digging a large trench in a field, Gilbert,
his brother, with him. The boy pausing on the edge of the
trench, and looking down upon Burns, said, "Robbie, what's that
ye're doin'?" "Howkin' a muckle hole, Tammie." "What for?" "To
bury the Deil in, Tammie!" (one can fancy how those eyes would
glow.) "A'but, Robbie," said the logical Tammie, "hoo're ye to
get him in?" "Ay" said Burns, "that's it, hoo are we to get Him
in!" and went off into shouts of laughter; and every now and
then during that summer day shouts would come from that hole, as
the idea came over him. If one could only have daguerreotyped
his day's fancies!_

"What is love, Mary?" said Seventeen to Thirteen, who was busy with her English lessons.

"Love! what do you mean, John?"

"I mean, what's love?"

"Love's just love, I suppose."

(Yes, Mary, you are right to keep by the concrete; analysis kills love as well as other things. I once asked a useful-information young lady what her mother was. 'Oh, mamma's a _biped_!' I turned in dismay to her younger sister, and said, What do you say? 'Oh, my mother's just my mother.')

"But what part of speech is it?"

"It's a substantive or a verb." (Young Horne Tooke didn't ask her if it was an active or passive, an irregular or defective verb; an inceptive, as _calesco_, I grow warm, or _dulcesco_, I grow sweet; a frequentative or a desiderative, as _nupturio_, I desire to marry.)

"I think it is a verb," said John, who was deep in other diversions, besides those of Purley; "and I think it must have been originally _the Perfect of Live_, like thrive throve, strive strove."

"Capital, John!" suddenly growled Uncle Oldbuck, who was supposed to be asleep in his arm-chair by the fireside, and who snubbed and supported the entire household. "It was that originally, and it will be our own faults, children, if it is not that at last, as well as, ay, and more than at first. What does Richardson say, John? read him out." John reads--

LOVE, _v. s._ To prefer, to desire, as an
-LESS. object of possession or enjoyment
-LY, _ad. av._ to delight in, to be
-LILY. pleased or gratified with, to
-LINESS. take pleasure or gratification
-ER. in, delight in.
-ING. _Love_, the _s_ is app. emph. to
-INGLY. the passion between the sexes.
-INGNESS. _Lover_ is, by old writers, app. as
-ABLE.[A] _friend_--by male to male.
-SOME.[B] _Love_ is much used--pref.
ERED.[C] [A] _Wiclif._ [B] _Chaucer._ [C] _Shak._

_Love-locks_,--locks (of hair) to set off the beauty; the
loveliness.

A. S. _Luf-ian_; D. _Lie-ven_; Ger. _-ben_, amare, diligere.
Wach. derives from _lieb_, bonum, because every one desires that
which is good: _lieb_, it is more probable, is from _lieb-en_,
grateful, and therefore _good_. It may at least admit a
conjecture that A. S. _Lufian_, to _love_, has a reason for its
application similar to that of L. _Di-ligere_ (_legere_, to
gather), to take up or out (of a number), to choose, sc. one in
preference to another, to prefer; and that it is formed upon A.
S. _Hlif-ian_, to lift or take up, to pick up, to select, to
prefer, Be- Over- Un-

_Uncle impatiently._--"Stuff; 'grateful!' 'pick up! stuff! These word-mongers know nothing about it. Live, love; that is it, the perfect of live."[34]

[34] They are strange beings, these lexicographers. Richardson,
for instance, under the word SNAIL, gives this
quotation from Beaumont and Fletcher's _Wit at Several
Weapons_,--

"Oh, Master Pompey! how is 't, man?

_Clown_--SNAILS, I'm almost starved with love
and cold, and one thing or other."

Any one else knows of course that it is "'s nails"--the
contraction of the old oath or interjection--_God's nails_.

After this, Uncle sent the cousins to their beds.

Mary's mother was in hers, never to rise from it again. She was a widow, and Mary was her husband's niece. The house quiet, Uncle sat down in his chair, put his feet on the fender, and watched the dying fire; it had a rich central glow, but no flame, and no smoke, it was flashing up fitfully, and bit by bit falling in. He fell asleep watching it, and when he slept, he dreamed. He was young; he was seventeen; he was prowling about the head of North St. David Street, keeping his eye on a certain door,--we call them common stairs in Scotland. He was waiting for Mr. White's famous English class for girls coming out. Presently out rushed four or five girls, wild and laughing; then came one, bounding like a roe:

"Such eyes were in her head,
And so much grace and power!"

She was surrounded by the rest, and away they went laughing, she making them always laugh the more. Seventeen followed at a safe distance, studying her small, firm, downright heel. The girls dropped off one by one, and she was away home by herself, swift and reserved. He, imposter as he was, disappeared through Jamaica Street, to reappear and meet her, walking as if on urgent business, and getting a cordial and careless nod. This beautiful girl of thirteen was afterwards the mother of our Mary, and died in giving her birth. She was Uncle Oldbuck's first and only sweetheart; and here was he, the only help our young Horne Tooke, and his mother and Mary had. Uncle awoke, the fire dead, and the room cold. He found himself repeating Lady John Scott's lines--

"When thou art near me,
Sorrow seems to fly,
And then I think, as well I may,
That on this earth there is no one
More blest than I.

But when thou leav'st me,
Doubts and fears arise,
And darkness reigns,
Where all before was light.
The sunshine of my soul
Is in those eyes,
And when they leave me
All the world is night.

But when thou art near me,
Sorrow seems to fly,
And then I feel, as well I may,
That on this earth there dwells not one
So blest as I."[35]

[35] Can the gifted author of these lines and of their music not
be prevailed on to give them and others to the world, as
well as to her friends?

Then taking down _Chambers's Scottish Songs_, he read aloud:--

"O I'm wat, wat,
O I'm wat and weary;
Yet fain wad I rise and rin,
If I thocht I would meet my dearie.
Aye waukin', O!
Waukin' aye, and weary;
Sleep, I can get nane
For thinkin' o' my dearie.

Simmer's a pleasant time,
Flowers o' every color;
The winter rins ower the heugh,
And I long for my true lover.

When I sleep I dream,
When I wauk I'm eerie,
Sleep I can get nane,
For thinkin' o' my dearie.

Lanely nicht comes on,
A' the lave are sleepin';
I think on my true love,
And blear my e'en wi' greetin'.

Feather beds are saft--
Pentit rooms are bonnie;
But ae kiss o' my dear love
Better's far than ony.