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THE DORSCH LIBRARY.                            1
The private Library of Edward Dorsch, M. D., of
Monroe, Michigan, presented to the University of Michigan by his widow, May, 1888, in accordance with a wish
expressed by him.








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:4:.     AUTHOR OF' RAB AND HIS FRIENDS.A
"....-.
4...4<.
BEDMONSTJOHN      BROWN, M.D. INBURGH
<'        AUTHOR OF ADRAB AND HIS FRIENDS.  >':
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' EDMONSTON AND DOUGLAS, EDINBURGH; t /
HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND CO., LONDON..?
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vfcx oumwcz


SEVENTH EDTION.




WORKS BY DR. JOHN BROWN.
Hore SubseciVwB. Fifth Edition. 1 Volume Foolscap
8vo, Price 6s.
Letter to the Rev. John Cairns, D.D.             Second
Edition. Crown 8vo, Sewed, Price 2s.
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Price 6d.
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Rab and his Friends. With Illustrations by GEORGE
HARVEY, R.S.A., J. NOEL PATON, R.S.A., and J. B.
Cheap Edition. In One Volume, Cloth, Price 3s. 6d.
'With Brains, Sir;' Extracted from 'Hore Subsecivae.'
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Minchmoor. Price 6d.
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EDINBURGH: EDMONSTON AND DOUGLAS.




'WITH BRAINS, SIR."
BY JOHN BROWN, M.D.
AUTHOR OF " RAB AND HIS FRIENDS."
EDMONSTON AND DOUGLAS, EDINBURGH;
HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND CO., LONDON.
866.




" Multi multa sctunt,pauci multum."
" It is one thing to wish to have truth on our side, and
another thing to wish to be on the side of truth."- WHATELY.
"I would forge as well as furnish the mind."-MONTAIGNE.
" It is by your own eyes, and your own ears, and your
own minds, and (I may add) by your own hearts, that you
must observe, and learn, and profit. I can only point to the
objects, and say little else than " See here, and see there.' "DR. LATHAM.
"It is a wise and benevolent, though by no means an
obvious arrangement of a creative Providence, that a certain
degree of oblivion becomes a most useful instrument in the.advancement of human knowledge."-DR. THOMAS YOUNG.




To JAMES SYME, Esq.,
Professor of Clinical Surgery in the University of Edinburgh,
My old Master and constant Friend,
And a signal exemplar of the power of " Brains,"
These pages are gratefully Inscribed.




I
I




" With BRAINS, Sir."


PRAY, Mr. Opie, may I ask what you mix
your colours with??" said a brisk dilettante student to the great painter.  " With
Brains, Sir," was the gruff reply-and the right
one.  It did not give much of what we call
information; it did not expound the principles
and rules of the art; but, if the inquirer had
the commodity referred to, it would awaken
him; it would set him a going, a-thinking, and
a-painting to good purpose. If he had not the
wherewithal, as was likely enough, the less he had
to do with colours and their mixture the better.
Many other artists, when asked such a question,
would have either set about detailing the mechanical composition of such and such colours,
in'such and such proportions, rubbed up so and
so; or perhaps they would (and so much the
better, but not the best) have shown him how
they laid them on; but even this would leave




6


With Brains, Sir.


him at the critical point. Opie preferred going
to the quick and the heart of the matter: c With
Brains, Sir."
Sir Joshua Reynolds was taken by a friend to
see a picture.  He was anxious to admire it,
and he looked it over with a keen and careful
but favourable eye.  c Capital composition;
correct drawing; the colour, tone, chiaroscuro
excellent; but-but —it wants, hang it, it wants
-That!" snapping his fingers; and, wanting
"that," though it had everything else, it was
worth nothing.
Again, Etty was appointed teacher of the
students of the Royal Academy, having been
preceded by a clever, talkative, scientific expounder of Esthetics, who delighted to tell the
young men how everything was done, how to
copy this, and how to express that. A student
came up to the new master, " How should I do
this, Sir?"  "Suppose.you try."  Another,
c What does this mean, Mr. Etty?"  " Suppose
you look."  " But I have looked." " Suppose
you look again." And they did try, and they
did look, and looked again; and they saw and
achieved what they never could have done, had
the how or the what (supposing this possible,
which it is not in its full and highest meaning)
been told them, or done for them; in the one




With Brains, Sir.


7


case, sight and action were immediate, exact,
intense, and secure; in the other mediate, feeble,
and lost as soon as gained.  But what are
"Brains?" what did Opie mean? and what is
Sir Joshua's " That?"  What is included in it?
and what is the use, or the need of trying and
trying, of missing often before you hit, when
you can be told at once and be done with it; or
of looking when you may be shown? Everything in medicine and in painting-practical arts
-as means to ends, let their scientific enlargement be ever so rapid and immense, depends
upon the right answers to these questions.
First of all, " brains," in the painter, are not
diligence, knowledge, skill, sensibility, a strong
will, or a high aim,-he may have all these, and
never paint anything so truly good and effective
as the rugged woodcut we must all remember,
of Apollyon bestriding the whole breadth of the
way, and Christian girding at him like a man,
in the old sixpenny Pilgrim's Progress; and a
young medical student may have zeal, knowledge, ingenuity, attention, a good eye and a
steady hand-he may be an accomplished anatomist, stethoscopist, histologist, and analyst;
and yet, with all this, and all the lectures, and
all the books, and all the sayings, and all the
preparations, drawings, tables and other helps




8


With Brains, Sir.


of his teachers, crowded into his memory or his
note-books, he may be beaten in treating a whitlow or a colic, by the nurse in the wards where
he was clerk, or by the old' country doctor who
brought him into the world, and who listens
with such humble wonder to his young friend's
account, on his coming home after each session,
of all he had seen and done-of all the last
astonishing discoveries and operations of the day.
What the painter wants, in addition to, and as
the complement of the other elements, is genius
and sense; what the doctor needs to crown and
give worth and safety to his accomplishments,
is sense and genius: in the first case, more of
this, than of that; in the second, more of that,
than of this. These are the " Brains" and the
" That."
And what is genius? and what is sense? Genius is a peculiar native aptitude, or tendency,
to any one calling or pursuit over all others.
A man may have a genius for -governing, for
killing, or for curing the greatest number of
men, and in the best possible manner: a man
may have a genius for the fiddle, or his mission
may be for the tight-rope, or the Jew's harp;
or it may be a natural turn for seeking, and
finding, and teaching truth, and for doing the
greatest possible good to mankind; or it may




With Brains, Sir.


9


be a turn equally original for seeking, and finding, and teaching a lie, and doing the maximum
of mischief. It was as natural, as inevitable,
for Wilkie to develop 'himself into a painter,
and such a painter as we know him to have
been, as it is for an acorn when planted to grow
up into an oak, a specific Quercus robur. But
genius, and nothing else, is not enough, even for
a painter: he must likewise have sense; and
what is sense? Sense drives, or ought to drive,
tihe coach; sense regulates, combines, restrains,
commands, all the rest-even the genius; and
sense implies exactness and soundness, power
and promptitude of mind.
Then for the young doctor, he must have as
his main, his master faculty, SENSE-Brains-vove,
justness of mind, because his subject-matter is
one in which principle works, rather than impulse,
as in painting; the understanding has first to do
with it, however much it is worthy of the full
exercise of the feelings, and the affections. But
all will not do, if GENIUS is not there,-a real
turn for the profession. It may not be a liking
for it-some of the best of its practitioners never
really liked it, at least liked other things better;
but there must be a fitness or faculty of body
and mind for its full, constant, exact pursuit.
This sense and this genius, such a special theraA 2




10


With Brains, Sir.


peutic gift, had Hippocrates, Sydenham, Pott,
Pinel, John Hunter, Delpech, Dupuytren,
Kellie, Cheyne, Baillie, and Abercrombie. We
might, to pursue the subject, pick out painters
who had much genius and little or no sense, and
vice versd; and physicians and surgeons, who
had sense without genius, and genius without
sense, and some perhaps who had neither, and
yet were noticeable, and, in their own sideways,
useful men.
But our great object will be gained if we have
given our young readers (and these remarks are
addressed exclusively to students) any idea of
what we mean, if we have made them think,
and look inwards. The noble and sacred science
you have entered on, is large, difficult, and deep,
beyond most others; it is every day becoming
larger, deeper, and in many senses more difficult, more complicated and involved.  It requires more than the averdge intellect, energy,
attention, patience, and courage, and that singular but imperial quality, at once a gift and an
acquirement, presence of mind-dcy7votla or nearness of the vo0s, as the subtle Greeks called it
-than almost any other department of human
thought and 'action, except perhaps that of
ruling men. Therefore it is, that we hold it to
be of paramount importance that the parents,:~ e..




With Brains, Sir.


I


teachers, and friends of youths intended for
medicine, and above all, that those who examine
them on their entering on their studies, should
at feast (we might safely go much farther)
satisfy themselves as far as they can, that they
are not below par in intelligence; they may be
deficient and unapt, qua medici, and yet, if taken
in time, may make excellent men in other useful
and honourable callings.
But suppose we have got the requisite amount
and specific kind of capacity, how are we to furnish it with its means; how are we to make it effectual for its end? On this point we say nothing,
except that the fear now-a-days, is rather that the
mind gets too much of too many things, than
too little or too few.  But this means of turning knowledge to action, making it what Bacon
meant when he said it was power, invigorating
the thinking substance-giving tone, and you
may call it muscle and nerve, blood and bone,
to the mind-a firm gripe, and a keen and sure
eye: that, we think, is far too little considered
or cared for at present, as if the mere act of
filling in everything for ever into a poor lad's
brain, would give him the ability to make anything of it, and above all, the power to appropriate the small portions of true nutriment, and
reject the dregs.;,f <>  f




I 2


With Brains, Sir.


One comfort we have, that in the main, and
in the last resort, there is really very little that
can be done for any man by another. Begin
with the sense and the genius-the keen appetite
and the good digestion-and, amid all obstacles
and hardships, the work goes on merrily and
well; without these, we all know what a laborious affair, and a dismal, it is to make an
incapable youth apply. Did any of you ever
set yourselves to keep up artificial respiration,
or to trudge about for a whole night with a
narcotized victim of opium, or transfuse blood
(your own perhaps) into a poor, fainting exanimate wretch? If so, you will have some idea
of the heartless attempt, and its generally vain
and miserable result, to make a dull student
apprehend-a debauched one, interested, knowilg, or active in anything beyond the base of his
brain-a weak, etiolated intellect hearty, and
worth anything; and yet how many such are
dragged through their dreary curricula, and by
some miraculous process of cramming, and
equally miraculous power of turning their insides out, get through their examinations: and
then-what then? providentially, in most cases,
they find their level; the broad daylight of the
world-its shrewd and keen eye, its strong instinct of what can, and what cannot, serve its




With Brains, Sir.


I3


purpose-puts all, except the poor object himself, to rights; happy is it for him if he turn
to some new and more congenial pursuit in
time.
But it may be asked, how are the brains to
be strengthened, the sense quickened, the genius
awakened, the affections raised-the whole man
turned to the best account for the cure of his
fellow-men? How are you, when physics and
physiology are increasing so marvellously, and
when the burden of knowledge, the quantity of
transferable information, of registered facts, of
current names-and such names!-is so infinite:
how are you to enable a student to take all in,
bear up under all, and use it as not abusing it,
or being abused by it? You must invigorate
the containing and sustaining mind, you must
strengthen him from within, as well as fill him
from without; you must discipline, nourish,
edify, relieve, and refresh his entire nature; and
how? We have no time to go at large into this,
but we will indicate what we mean:-encourage
languages, especially French and German, at the
early part of their studies; encourage not merely
the book knowledge, but the pesonal pursuit of
natural history, of field botany, of geology, of
zoology; give the young, fresh, unforgetting
eye, exercise and free scope upon the infinite




14


With Brains, Sir.


diversity and combination of natural colours,
forms, substances, surfaces, weights, and sizes
-everything, in a word, that will educate their
eye or ear, their touch, taste, and smell, their
sense of muscular resistance; encourage them by
prizes, to make skeletons, preparations, and collections of any natural objects; and, above all, try
and get hold of their affections, and make them
put their hearts into their work. Let them,
if possible, have the advantage of a regulated
tutorial, as well as the ordinary professorial system. Let there be no excess in the number of
classes and frequency of lectures. Let them be
drilled in composition; by this we mean the
writing and spelling of correct, plain English (a
matter not of every-day occurrence, and not on
the increase),-let them be directed to the best
books of the old masters in medicine, and examinedin them,-let them be encouraged in the
use of a wholesome and manly literature. We do
not mean popular or even modern literaturesuch as Emerson, Bulwer, or Alison, or the trash
of inferior periodicals or novels-fashion, vanity,
and the spirit of the age, will attract them readily
enough to all these; we refer to the treasures' of
our elder and better authors.  If our young medical student would take our advice, and for an
hour or two twice a week take up a volume of




With Brains, Sir.


I 5


Shakspere, Cervantes, Milton, Dryden, Pope,
Cowper, Montaigne, Addison, Defoe, Goldsmith,
Fielding, Scott, Charles Lamb, Macaulay, Jeffrey, Sydney Smith, Helps, Thackeray, &c., not
to mention authors on deeper and more sacred
subjects-they would have happier and healthier
minds, and make none the worse doctors. If
they, by good fortune-for the tide has set in
strong against the litere humaniores-have come
off with some Greek or Latin, we would supplicate for an ode of Horace, a couple of pages of
Cicero or of Pliny once a month, and a page
*of Xenophon.   French and German should
be mastered either before or during the first
years of study.  They will never afterwards
be acquired so easily or so thoroughly, and
the want of them may be bitterly felt when
too late.
But one main help, we are persuaded, is to
be found in studying, and by this we do not
mean the mere reading, but the digging into
and through, the energizing upon, and mastering such books as we have mentioned at the
close of this paper. These are not, of course,
the only works we would recommend to those
who wish to understand thoroughly, and to
make up their minds, on these great subjects as
wholes; but we all know too well that.our Art




x6


With Brains, Sir.


is long, broad, and deep,-and Time, opportunity, and our little hour, brief and uncertain,
therefore, we would recommend those books as
a sort of game of the mind, a mental exerciselike cricket, a gymnastic, a clearing of the eyes
of their mind as with euphrasy, a strengthening their power over particulars, a getting fresh,
strong views of worn out, old things, and, above
all, a learning the right use of their reason, and
by knowing their own ignorance and weakness,
finding true knowledge and strength. Taking
up a book like Arnauld, and reading a chapter
of his lively, manly sense, is like throwing your
manuals, and scalpels, and microscopes, and
natural (most unnatural) orders out of your
hand and head, and taking a game with the
Grange Club, or a run to the top of Arthur
Seat. Exertion quickens your pulse, expands
your lungs, makes your blood warmer and
redder, fills your mouth with the pure waters of
relish, strengthens and supples your legs; and
though on your way to the top you may encounter rocks, and baffling dibris, and gusts of
fierce winds rushing out upon you from behind
corners, just as you will find in Arnauld, and all
truly serious and honest books of the kind, difficulties and 'puzzles, winds of doctrine, and deceitful mists; still you are rewarded at the top




With Brains, Sir.


I7


by the wide view. You see, as from a tower,
the end of all. You look into the perfections
and relations of things. You see the clouds, the
bright lights, and the everlasting hills on the fai
horizon. You come down the hill a happier, a
better, and a hungrier man, and of a better mind.
But, as we said, you must eat the book, you must
crush it, and cut it with your teeth and swallow
it; just as you must walk up, and not be carried
up the hill, much less imagine you are there, or
look upon a picture of what you would see were
you up, however accurately or artistically done;
no-you yourself must do both.
Philosophy-the love and the possession of
wisdom-is divided into two things, science or
knowledge; and a habit, or power of mind.
He who has got the first is not truly wise unless
his mind has reduced and assimilated it, as Dr.
Prout would have said, unless he appropriates
and can use it for his need.
The prime qualifications of a physician may
be summed up in the words Capax, Perspicax,
Sagax, Effirax. Capax-there must be room to
receive, and arrange, and keep knowledge; Perspicax-senses and perceptions, keen, accurate,
and immediate, to bring in materials from all
sensible things; Sagax-a central power of knowing what is what, and what it is worth, of choos



i8


Wtith Brains, Sir.


ing and rejecting, ofjudging; and finally, Efficax
-the will and the way-the power to turn all the
other three-capacity, perspicacity, sagacity, to
account, in the performance of the thing in hand,
and thus rendering back to the outer-world, in
a new and useful form, what you had received
from it.  These are the intellectual qualities
which make up the physician, without any one
of which he would be mancus, and would not
deserve the name of a complete artsman, any
more than proteine would be itself if any one of
its four elements were amissing.
We have left ourselves no room to speak of
the books we have named at the end of this
paper. We recommend them all to our young
readers.  Arnauld's excellent and entertaining
Art of 'Chinking-the once famous Port-Royal
Logic-is, if only one be taken, probably the
best. Thomson's little book is admirable, and
is specially suited for a medical student, as its
illustrations are drawn with great intelligence
and exactness from chemistry and physiology.
We know nothing more perfect than the analysis,
at page 348, of Sir H. Davy's beautiful experiments to account for the traces of an alkali,
found when decomposing water by galvanism.
It is quite exquisite, the hunt after and the unearthing of "the residual cause."  This book




W With Brains, Sir.


I9


has the great advantage of a clear, lively, and
strong style. We can only give some short extracts.
INDUCTION AND DEDUCTION.
" We may define the inductive method as the
process of discovering laws and rules from facts,
and causes from effects; *and the deductive, as
the method of deriving facts from laws, and
effects from their causes."
There is a valuable paragraph on anticipation
and its uses-there is a power and desire of the
mind to project itself from the known into the
unknown, in the expectation of finding what it
is in search of.
" This power of divination, this sagacity, which
is the mother of all science, we may call anticipation. The intellect, with a dog-like instinct,
will not hunt until it has found the scent. It
must have some presage of the result before it
will turn its energies to its attainment.  The
system of anatomy which has immortalized the
name of Oken, is the consequence of a flash of
anticipation, which glanced through his mind
when he picked up, in a chance walk, the skull
of a deer, bleached by the weather, and exclaimed-' It is a vertebral column!"'
'"The man of science possesses principles



20


With Brains, Sir.


the man of art, not the less nobly gifted, is possessed and carried away by them. The principles
which art involves, science evolves.  The truths
on which the success of art depends lurk in the
artist's mind in an undeveloped state, guiding
his hand, stimulating his invention, balancing
his judgment, but not appearing in regular propositions."  "An art (that of medicine for
instance) will of course admit into its limits,
everything (and nothing else) which can conduce
to the performance of its own proper work; it
recognises no other principles of selection."
" He who reads a book on logic, probably
thinks no better when he rises up than when he
sat down; but if any of the principles there
unfolded cleave to his memory, and he afterwards, perhaps unconsciously, shapes and corrects his thoughts by them, no doubt the whole
powers of his reasoning receive benefit. In a
word, every art, from reasoning to riding and
rowing, is learned by assiduous practice; and if
principles do any good, it is proportioned to the
readiness with which they can be converted into
rules, and the patient constancy with which they
are applied in all our attempts at excellence."
" A man can teach names to another man, but
he cannot plant in another's mind that far higher
gift —the power of naming."




With Brains, Sir.


21


" Language is not only the vehicle of thought,
it is a great and efficient instrument in thinking."
CC The whole of every science may be made
the subject of teaching. Not so with art; much
of it is not teachable."
Coleridge's profound and brilliant, but unequal, and often somewhat nebulous Essay on
Method, is worth reading over, were it only as
an exercitation, and to impress on the mind the
meaning and value of method. Method is the
road by which you reach, or hope to reach, a
certain end; it is a process.  It is the best
direction for the search after truth. System,
again, which is often confounded with it, is a
mapping out, a circumscription of knowledge,
either already gained, or theoretically laid down
as probable. Aristotle had a system which did
much good, but also much mischief. Bacon
was chiefly occupied in preparing and pointing
out the way-the only way-of procuring knowledge.  He left to others to systematize the
knowledge after it was got; but the pride and
indolence of the human spirit lead it constantly
to build systems on imperfect knowledge. It
has the trick of filling up out of its own fancy
what it has not the diligence, the humility, and
the honesty, to seek in nature; whose servant,
and articulate voice, it ought to be.




22


With Brains, Sir.


Descartes' little tract on Method is, like every
thing the lively and deep-souled Breton did, full
of original and bright thought.
Sir John Herschel's volume needs no praise.
We know no work of the sort, fuller of the best
moral worth, as well as the highest philosophy.
We fear it is more talked of than read.
We would recommend the article in the Quarterly Review as first-rate, and written with great
eloquence and grace.
SYDNEY SMITH'S Sketches of Lectures on Moral
Philosophy. Second Edition.
SEDGWICK'S Discourse on the Studies at Cambridge, with a Preface and Appendix. Sixth
Edition.
We have put these two worthies here, not
because we had forgotten them,-much less
because we think less of them than the others,
especially Sydney. But because we bring them
in at the end of our small entertainment, as we
hand round a liqueur-be it Cura(oa, Kimmel,
or old Glenlivet-after dinner, and end with the
heterogeneous plum-pudding-that most English
of realized ideas. Sydney Smith's book is one
of rare excellence, and well worthy of the study
of men and women, though perhaps not tran



With Brains, Sir.


23


scendental enough for our modern philosophers,
male and female. It is really astonishing how
much of the best of everything, from patriotism
to nonsense, is to be found in this volume of
sketches. You may read it through, if your
sides can bear such an accumulation of laughter,
with great benefit; and if you open it anywhere,
you can't read three sentences without coming
across some, it may be common thought, and
often original enough, better expressed and put
than you ever before saw it. The lectures on
the Affections, the Passions and Desires, and
on Study, we would have everybody to read
and enjoy.
Sedgwick is a different, and, as a whole, an
inferior man; but a ma n every inch of him, and
an Englishman too, in his thoughts, and in his
fine mother wit and tongue. He has, in the
midst of all his confusion and passionateness, the
true instinct of philosophy-the true, venatic
sepse of objective truth.  We know nothing
better in the main, than his demolition of what
is untrue, and his reduction of what is absurd,
and his taking the wind out of what is tympanitic, in the notorious Vestiges; we don't say he
always does justice to what is really good in it;
his mission is to execute justice upon it, and that
he does. His remarks on Oken and. Owen,




24


[i4th Brains, Sir.


and his quotations from Dr. Clarke's admirable
paper on Development, in the Cambridge Philosophical Tiransactions, we would recommend to
our medical friends. The very confusion of
Sedgwick is the free outcome of a deep and racy
nature; it puts us in mind of what happened,
when an Englishman was looking with astonishment and disgust at a Scotchman eating a singed
sheep's head, and was asked by the eater what
he thought of that dish? " Dish! Sir, do you
call that a dish?"  "Dish or no dish," rejoined
the Caledonian, "there's a deal o' fine confused
feedin' aboot it, let me tell you."
We conclude these rambling remarks with a
quotation from Arnauld, the friend of Pascal,
and the intrepid antagonist of the Vatican and
the Grand Monarque; one of the noblest,
freest, most untiring and honest intellects, our
world has ever seen.  "Why don't you rest
sometimes?" said his friend Nicole to him.
"Rest! why should I rest here? haven't I an
eternity to rest in?" The following sentence
from his Port-Royal Logic, so well introduced
and translated by Mr. Baynes, contains the gist
of all we have been trying to say. It should be
engraven on the tablets of every young student's
heart-for the heart has to do with study as well
as the head.




With Brains, Sir.


25


" There is nothing more desirable than good
sense and justness of mind,-all other qualities of
mind are of limited use, but exactness of judgment is of general utility in every part and in
all employments of life.
" We are too apt to employ reason merely as an
instrumentfor acquiring the sciences, whereas we
ought to avail ourselves of the sciences,as an instrument for perfecting our reason; justness of mind
being infinitely more important than all the
speculative knowledge which we can obtain by
means of sciences the most solid. This ought
to lead wise men to make their sciences the
exercise and not the occupation of their mental
powers. Men are not born to employ all their
time in measuring lines, in considering the various movements of matter; their minds are too
great, and their life too short, their time too
precious, to be so engrossed; but they are born
to be just, equitable, and prudent, in all their
thoughts, their actions, their business; to these
things they ought especially to train and discipline themselves."
So, young friends, bring Brains to your work,
and mix everything with them, and them with
everything.  Arma virumque, tools and a man
to use them. Stir up, direct, and give free scope
to Sir Joshua's "that," and try again, and again;




2 6


With Brains, Sir.


and look, oculo intents, acie acerrimd. Looking
is a voluntary act,-it is the man within coming
to the window; seeing is a state,-passive and
receptive, and, at the best, little more than
registrative.
Since writing the above, we have read with
great satisfaction Dr. Forbes' Lecture delivered
before the Chichester Literary Society and Mechanics' Institute, and published at their request.
Its subject is, Happiness in its relation to Work
and Knowledge. It is worthy of its author, and
is, we think, more largely and finely imbued with
his personal character, than any one other of his
works that we have met with. We could not
wish a fitter present for a young man starting on
the game of life.  It is a wise, cheerful, manly,
and warm-hearted discourse on the words of
Bacon,-" He that is wise, let him pursue some
desire or other: for he that doth not affect some
one thing in chief, unto him all things are distasteful and tedious." We will not spoil this little
volume by giving any account of it. Let our
readers get it, and read it. The extracts from
his Thesis, De Mentis Exercitatione et Felicitate
exinde derivandd, are very curious-showing the
native vigour and bent of his mind, and indicating
also, at once the identity and the growth of his
thoughts during the lapse of thirty-three years.




With Brains, Sir.


27


We give the last paragraph, the sense and
the filial affection of which are alike admirable.
Having mentioned to his hearers that they saw
in himself a living illustration of the truth of his
position, that happiness is a necessary result of
knowledge and work, he thus concludes:"If you would further desire to know to
what besides I am chiefly indebted for so enviable a lot, I would say:-Ist, Because I had the
good fortune to come into the world with a
healthful frame, and with a sanguine temperament. 2d, Because I had no patrimony, and
was therefore obliged to trust to my own exertions for a livelihood. 3d, Because I was born
in a land where instruction is greatly prized and
readily accessible. 4th, Because I was brought
up to a profession which not only compelled
mental exercise, but supplied for its use materials of the most delightful and varied kind.
And lastly and principally, because the good man
to whom I owe my existence, had the foresight to
know what would be best for his children. He
had the wisdom, and the courage, and the exceeding love, to bestow all that could be spared of his
worldly means, to purchase for his sons, that which
is beyond price, EDUCATION; well judging that
the means so expended, if hoarded for future use,
would be, if not valueless, certainly evanescent,




With Brains, Sir.


while the precious treasure for which they were
exchanged, a cultivated and instructed mind,
would not only last through life, but might be
the fruitful source of treasures far more precious
than itself. So equipped he sent them forth
into the world to fight Life's battle, leaving the
issue in the hand of God; confident, however,
that though they might fail to achieve renown
or to conquer Fortune, they possessed that
which, if rightly used, could win for them the
yet higher prize of HAPPINESS."
Since this was written, many good books have
appeared, but we would select three, which all
young men should read and get-Hartley Coleridge's Lives of Northern Worthies, Thackeray's
Letters of Brown the Elder, and Tom Brown's
School-days-in spirit and in expression, we don't
know any better models for manly courage, good
sense, and feeling, and they are as well written
as they are thought.
There are the works of another man, one of
the greatest, not only of our, but of any time, to
which we cannot too earnestly draw our young
readers. We mean the philosophical writings
of Sir William Hamilton. We know no more
invigorating, quickening, rectifying kind of exercise, than reading with a will, anything e has




WiM Brains, Sir.


'29


written upon permanently important subjects.
There is a greatness and simplicity, a closeness
of thought, a gla ce keen and wide, a play
of the entire nat e, and a truthfulness and
downrightness, with an amount, and accuracy,
and vivification of learning, such as we know of
in no one other writer, ancient or modern-not
even Leibnitz; and we know no writings which
so wholesomely at once exalt and humble the
reader, make him feel what is in him, and what
he can and may, as well as what he cannot, and
need never hope to know. In this respect,
Hamilton is as grand as Pascal, and more
simple; he exemplifies everywhere his own sublime adaptation of Scripture-unless a man become a little child, hie cannot enter into the
kingdom; he enters the temple stooping, but
he presses on, intrepid and alone, to the inmost
adytum, worshipping the more the nearer he gets
to the inaccessible shrine, whose veil ho mortal
hand has ever rent in twain. And we name
after him, the thoughtful, candid, impressive
little volume of his pupil, his friend, and his
successor, Professor Fraser.
The following passage from Sir William
Hamilton's Dissertations, besides its wise thought,
sounds in the ear like the pathetic and majestic
sadness of a symphony by Beethoven: —




With Brains,*Sir.


" There are two sorts of ignorance: we philosophize to escape ignorance, and the consummation of our philosophy is ignorance; we start
from the one, we repose in the other; they are
the goals from which, and to which, we tend;
and the pursuit of knowledge is but a course
between two ignorances, as human life is itself
only a travelling from grave to grave.
Tis p/os;-'EK Tv/JAoto Oop.v, Er&T TVLov.8ev'O.
The highest reach of human science is the scientific recognition of human ignorance; ' Qui
*nescit ignorare, ignorat scire.' This ' learned
ignorance' is the rational conviction by the
human mind of its inability to transcend certain
limits; it is the knowledge of ourselves,-the
science of man.   This is accomplished by a
demonstration of the disproportion between'what
is to be known, and our faculties of knowing,the disproportion, to wit, between the infinite
and the finite. In fact, the recognition of human ignorance is not only the one highest, but
the one true, knowledge; and its first-fruit, as
has been said, is humility. Simple nescience is
'not proud; consummated science is positively
humble. For this knowledge it is not, which
puffeth up;' but its opposite, the conceit of
false knowledge, —the conceit, in truth, as the




With Brains, Sir.


3


apostle notices, of an ignorance of the very
nature of knowlege,'Nam nesciens quid scire sit,
Te scire cuncta jactitas.'
"But as our knowledge stands to Ignorance,
so stands it also to Doubt. Doubt is the beginning and the end of our efforts to know; for
as it is true,-' Alte dubitat qui altius credit,'
so it is likewise true,-' Quo magis quarimus
magis dubitamus.'
"The grand result of human wisdom is thus
only a consciousness that what we know is as
nothing to what we know not (' Quantum est
quod nescimus!'),-an articulate confession, in
fact, by our natural reason, of the truth declared
in revelation, that ' now we see through a glass,
darkly.'"
His pupil writes in the same spirit and to the
same end:-" A discovery, by means of reflection and mental experiment, of the limits of
knowledge, is the highest and most universally
applicable discovery of all; it is the one through
which our intellectual life most strikingly blends
with the moral and practical part of human
nature. Progress in knowledge is often paradoxically indicated by a diminution in the apparent bulk of what we know.  Whatever helps
to work off the dregs of false opinion, and to




32


With Brains, Str.


purify the intellectual mass-whatever deepens
our conviction of our infinite ignorance-really
adds to, although it sometimes seems to diminish,
the rational possessions of man. This is the
highest kind of merit that is claimed for Philosophy by its earliest as well as by its latest
representatives.    It is by this   standard   that
Socrates and Kant measure the chief results of
their toil."
BOOKS REFERRED TO.
I. Arnauld's Port-Royal Logic; translated by T. S. Baynes.
-2. Thomson's Outlines of the Necessary Laws of Thought.
-3. Descartes on the Method of Rightly Conducting the
Reason, and Seeking Truth in the Sciences.-4. Coleridge's
Essay on Method.-5. Whately's Logic and Rhetoric; new
and cheap edition.-6. Mill's Logic; new and cheap edition.
-7. Dugald Stewart's Outlines.-8. Sir John Herschel's
Preliminary Dissertation.-9. Quarterly Review, vol. lxviii.;
Article upon Whewell's Philosophy of Inductive Sciences.io. Isaac Taylor's Elements of Thought.-I I. Sir William
Hamilton's edition of Reid; Dissertations; and Lectures.12. Professor Fraser's Rational Philosophy.-I 3. Locke on
the Conduct of the Understanding.


Edinburgh: T. Constable, Printer to Her Majesty.




Now ready, New and Cheaper Edition, in One Vol., Foolscap 8vo, 6s.
HORAE SUBSECIVIE.
BY JOHN     BROWN, M.D., F.R.S.E.
FBLLOW OF THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS, EDINBURGH.
CONTENTS.
LETTER TO JOHN CA I RNS, D.D.      EDUCATION THROUGH THE SENSES.
DR. CHALMERS.                      ArXINOIA-NEARNESS OF THE
DR. GEORGE WILSON.                   NOT   - PRESENCE OFl     MIND —
HER LAST HALF-CROWN.
QUEEN MARY'S CHILD-GARDEN.           ETYTOXIA: HAPPY GUESSING
OUR DOGS.                          THE BLACK DWARF'S BONES.
NOTES ON ART.                      RAB AND HIS FRIENDS.
"OH, I'M WAT, WAT!"                 WITH BRAINS, SIR 1"
I ARTHUR H. HALLAM.
Of all the John Browns, commend us to Dr. John Brown, the physician,
the man of genius, the humorist, the student of men, women, and dogs.
By means of two beautiful volumes, he has given the public a share of his
by-hours, and more pleasant hours it would be difficult to find in ally life.
Dr. Brown's master-piece is the story of a dog called ' Rab.' The tale moves
from t]e most tragic pathos to the most reckless humour, and''hld not have
been written but by a man of genius. Whether it moves to laughter or tears,
it is perfect in its way, and immortalizes its author. The contents of these
Horce Subsecimve are very miscellaneous.  From stories of dogs, biographies of doctors and ministers, hints on medical education and practice, we
turn to criticisms on poetry and art. One of the volumes contains the best
account of Arthur Hallam, the hero of Mr. Tennyson's Elegiacs, that is anywhere to be found. In the other, there is a very curious and racy criticism
on the poems of Henry Vaughan. -Times.
There is a pleasant article on the Arthur Henry Hallam of ' In Memoriam.'.. The story of " Rab and his Friends " is a veritable gem. It is true,
simple, pathetic, and touched with an antique grace, which, in such vicinity,
charms and surprises. If any pre-Raphaelite aspirant would learn how
Doric homeliness: may be united with the unMrost perfection and symmetry
of form, let him read this beautiful episode.... A book of much wisdom
and beauty, and we most heartily recommend it-its cause as well as its
execution.-Fraser's -Mag.




Now Ready, Vol. I., in Cloth, priuce 4s. 6d., containing1. Sketches of Highland Character-SHEEr FARMERS AND DROVERS.
2. Convicts. By a PRACTICAL HAND,
S. Waylide Thoughts of an Asophophilosopher.-By D'Aucy W.
TnOMPSONv. No. 1. RAINY WEATHER; or, the, Philosophy of
Sorrow. GoosEsKiN; or, the Philosophy of Horror. TE DRum
LAUDAMUS; or, the Philosophy of Joy.
4. The Enterldn. By JOHN BROWN, M.D.
5. Waxyside Thoughts of an Asophophilosopher. By D'ARCY WV.
THomPSONq. No. 2. AssE-N-HISTORY-PLAGUES.
G. Peniteutiaries and Reformatories.
7. Notes from Paris; or, Why a-re Frenchmen and Englishmen
different?
S. Essays by an Old Man. No. 1. IN MEMORIAM-VANITAS VANITATUm-FRiENDs.
9. Wayside Thoughts of an Asophophilosopher. By D'ARcy W.
THOMPSON. No. 3. NOT GODLESS, ]JUT GODLY; A TwRIAGULAR
EON EDUCATION.
10.          ceof the Reformation on the Scottish Character.' By
J1. A. F~ouisz, Author of the W4istory of England.'
11. The Cattle Plague. -By LYON PLAYPAIR, C.B., LL.])., F.R.S., ETC.
I2., Rough Nights' Qnarterst. By Osrs OF THE PEOPLE WHO HAVE.
ROUGHIED IT.
is., Utters on the Edncation of Young Chidren. By S. 0. 0.
14'. Tho lftonnontfteld Piseicultural Exrporments. 1853-1866. By'
lonsaw BUm?.
TJo b~e followed by other Papers.
EDINBURGH: EDMONSTON            AN-D fD0UGLA,8.




OUR DOG


S


BY JOHN BROWN, M.D.
Author of 'Rab and his Friends,' etc.


The Duchess.


EDMONSTON AND DOUGLAS, EDINBURGH
HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND CO., LONDON.
I 863,.


fstth ThoI u-  4
_,:~   ~'


PCo g lp




WaRKS BY DR. 7OHN BROWIN.
Extractedfromn  ' HOR    SUBSECIV^.'
SUPPLEMENTARY CHAPTER
TO THE
LIFE OF REV. JOHN BROWN, D.D.
A LETTER TO REV. JOHN CAIRNS, D.D.
Second Edition, fcap. 8vo, sewed, price 2s.
'The Rev. Dr. Brown's life had already been written. After the biography has been written, Dr. John Brown (his son) comes a mere gleaner
to pick up the straws that have been left, and to make out of them what he
can. He has produced a most beautiful work. It is only a true genius
who can thus make something out of nothing, and invests with enduring
interest the slight details of daily life which common men think beneath
their notice.'-Titims.
RAB AND HIS FRIENDS.
34th Thousand. Price 6d.
' Who is he that has not heard of if not read " Rab and his Friends?"
We suppose that there have been few stories ever printed which, in so
short a time, won for their author fame. Certainly never was a story so
short and so pathetic, so full of joyous tears, so brimming with the actions
from which spring sacred pity. We do not envy the man, and we cannot
imagine the woman or girl who could read the story of " Rab and his
Friends" without tears actual or imminent.'-Morning Hemld.
'What Landseer is upon canvas, that Dr. Brown is upon paper. The
canine family was never before so well represented in literature.'-Chabers'
7ourna/.
'WITH          BRAINS, SIR!'
Price 6d.




OUR DOGS.
BY JOHN BROWN, M.D.
Author-of 'Rab and his Ftienass,' ' With Brains, Sir,' etc.


The Duchess.


EDINBURGH:
EDMONSTON AND 'DOUGLAS.
1863.




Extracted from ' HOR   SUBSECIVE: Locke and Sydenham,
with other Occasional Papers.'




PREFACE.
THE printer's devil-a very small and black and gentle one, whose name
is Snowdon, whom I like to tease before he is off by giving him a small
coin and then taking it and seeing how he looks, ending with making him
haul it out of my fingers with- his teeth, a great joke to us two-was asleep
in the lobby, and I was trying to be pleased with the last sheet of Our
Dogs, when the door opens and in trots a hairy little fellow, with all the
gaiety and assurance proper to puppies, responsible and not. He, at one
bound, for he is as springy as Jock, was on the table, and staring at me and
then at the proof, with his head on one side, as much as to say, 'Oh! do
put me in,-Cur non? whisking off my spectacles with an ingenious jerk
of his tail, which same tail I have no doubt he will soon be able to crack
like a whip, so long, so plentiful, so handy it is already. Who could resist
him? Recovering my spectacles and my understanding, for if not identical
they are with me co-existent, I sketch him as he is now asleep at the fireside.
Knowing the pangs of bereavement and under the dread of that ineuctabile
fatum which compels dogs and men, we have often spoken of appointing
an assistant and successor to Dick; but we were ill to please, and we felt a
delicacy as to him, for he is as compact of love and jealousy as was the
Moor, or the elder Peteror Fussy or WIasp-to whose memory and to whose
Mistresses and Master I dedicate Our Dogs. One day lately, however, a friend
sent in a young Skye puppy for our judgment. We kept him for a day to
study him, and the upshot is that we keep him still. He was so funny, so
confidential, so plucky, his nose and the roof of his mouth were so black and
comely, his genius for oddity, for unexpectedness so decided, his tail so
glorious, that we could not let him go; and then, best of all, Dick tolerated
him, adopted him, allowed him to take liberties with his tail that no mortal
dog had ever before dared to do unbitten. Not that Dick played with
him, or showed any approach to hilarity or acute interest, but he permitted
himself and his dignity and his tail to be interfered with by this inveterate
imp in a way that made the question of succession clear. You'll obsene
s.  -..  -.;.
- r, 6 b q X, ' j-~ or,!




Preface.


that I give him no name; this was our distress-no name would fit him.
You know doubtless what one comes through in selecting a name for a
dog; it is infinitely worse than doing the same by a child; if it is your
seventeenth, you can fall back upon Scripture, or the Anglo-Saxons, or the
cardinal virtues; but with a dog there must be what Goethe calls an
elective affinity between the dog and the name. Well, we tried him for a
week in vain with all sorts of compact and cordial words, till one evening
after dinner, when we were sleepy and the room darkening, this young and
genial ruffian was seen perched in the arm-chair. 'Peter!' we all exclaimed, and Peter he is-not any particular Peter, but Peter absolute.
I don't know him well enough yet to speak definitely, but I incline to think
well of him, he is an original, and stands on his own bottom. Dogs, like
men, have generally some dominant quality; thus Toby was eminently
wide-awake, though -he was much else; Wylie, in the same way, was more
eident than any one other thing; Wasp more impassioned; Jock more daft;
Crab more deep-a very deep dog was Crab; John Pym more full o'
fechtin; Puck more of a simpleton; Rab more huge (in head, in heart, and
in affliction); and Dick, like another Richard, more judicious; but Peter
is, in, his essence and in every action-especially of his tail-which he
waves aloft like a feather or banner-ludicrous, he can't help it, he does
not mean it, he is it; he is like the great actor Liston, his mere look
makes you laugh; not that you laugh at him, or in any way think lightly
of his understanding; he is the cause, not the object of laughter, as many
a good man and great has been before him; he is not the least of a foolish
or hare-brained dog,-he is a dog of affection and nous. He is a dark
brindle, and as plucky and procacious as Mr. Roebuck, whom I am told
he resembles, but then he is young. If I survive him, which I almost
hope may not be, I shall perhaps write his life, which I promise will not
be so long as his tail and shorter than his temper, which, with all his
boyish wilfulness, I can see is as sweet and faithful as was Jonathan's (the
grandson of Kish) or Colonel Newcome's. If he survive me, I am sure
of one true mourner. Macfe esto fieer!
"Man is the god of the dog," says Burns after Lord Bacon; it were
well for usif we served our Master, as our dog serves his.




OUR DOGS.


WAS bitten severely by a little dog when with
my mother at Moffat Wells, being then three
years of age, and I have remained ' bitten' ever since
in the matter of dogs. I remember that little dog,
and can at this moment not only recal my pain and
terror-I have no doubt I was to blame-but also her
face; and were I allowed to search among the shades
in the cynic Elysian fields, I could pick her out still.
All my life I have been familiar with these faithful
creatures, making friends of them, and speaking to
them; and the only time I ever addressed the public,
about a year after being bitten, was at the farm of
Kirklaw Hill, near Biggar, when the text, given out
from an empty cart in which the ploughmen had
placed me, was -' Jacob's dog,' and my entire sermon
was as follows: ' Some say that Jacob had a black
dog (the o very long), and some say that Jacob had
a white dog, but I (imagine the presumption of four
years!) say Jacob had a brown dog, and a brown dog
it shall be.'
I had many intimacies from this time onwardsBawtie, of the inn; Keeper, the carrier's bull-terrier;




Our Dogs.


Tiger, a huge tawny mastiff from Edinburgh, which
I think must have been an uncle of Rab's; all the
sheep dogs at Callands-Spring, Mavis, Yarrow,
Swallow, Cheviot, etc.; but it was not till I was at
college, and my brother at the High School, that we
possessed a dog.
TOBY
Was the most utterly shabby, vulgar, mean-looking
cur I ever beheld: in one word, a tyke. He had not
one good feature except his teeth and eyes, and his
bark, if that can be called a feature. He was not
ugly enough to be interesting; his colour black and
white, his shape leggy and clumsy; altogether what
Sydney Smith would have called an extraordinarily
ordinary dog: and, as I have said, not even greatly
ugly, or, as the Aberdonians have it, bonnie wi' illfauredness.  My brother William  found him the
centre of attraction to a multitude of small blackguards who were drowning him slowly in Lochend
Loch, doing their best to lengthen out the process,
and secure the greatest amount of fun with the
nearest approach to death. Even then Toby showed
his great intellect by pretending to be dead, and thus
gaining time and an inspiration. William bought
him for twopence, and as he had it not, the boys
accompanied him to Pilrig Street, when I happened
to meet him, and giving the twopence to the' biggest




Toby.


7


boy, had the satisfaction of seeing a general engagement of much severity, during which the twopence
disappeared; one penny going off with a very small
and swift boy, and the other vanishing hopelessly into
the grating of a drain.
Toby was for weeks in the house unbeknown to
any one but ourselves two and the cook, and from
my grandmother's love of tidiness and hatred of dogs
and of dirt, I believe she would have expelled I him
whom we saved from drowning,' had not he, in his
straightforward way, walked into my father's bedroom one night when he was bathing his feet, and
introduced himself with a wag of his tail, intimating a
general willingness to be happy. My father laughed
most heartily, and at last Toby- having got his way
to his bare feet, and having begun to lick his soles
and between his toes with his small rough tongue, my
father gave such an unwonted shout of laughter, that
we-grandmother, sisters, and all of us-went in.
Grandmother might argue with all her energy and
skill, but as surely as the pressure of Tom Jones' infantile fist upon Mr. Allworthy's forefinger undid all
the arguments of his sister, so did Toby's tongue
and fun prove too many for grandmother's eloquence.
I somehow think Toby must have been up to all this,
for I think he had a peculiar love for my father ever
after, and regarded grandmother from that hour with
a careful and cool eye.
Toby, when full grown, was a strong coarse dog:




Our Dogs.


coarse in shape, in countenance, in hair, and in
manner.   I used to think that, according to the
Pythagorean doctrine, he must have been, or been
going to be, a Gilmerton carter. He was of the bullterrier variety, coarsened through much mongrelism
and a dubious and varied ancestry. His teeth were
good, and he had a large skull, and a rich bark as of
a dog three times his size, and a tail which I never
saw equalled-indeed it was a tail per se; it was of
immense girth and not short, equal throughout like a
policeman's baton; the machinery for working it was
of great power, and acted in a way, as far as I have
been able to discover, quite original. We called it
his ruler.
When he wished to get into the house, he first
whined gently, then growled, then gave a sharp bark,
and then came a resounding, mighty stroke, which
shook the house; this, after much study and watching, we found was done by his bringing the entire
length of his solid tail flat upon the door, with a
sudden and vigorous stroke; it was quite a tour de
force or a coup de queue, and he was perfect in it at
once, his first bang authoritative, having been as
masterly and telling as his last.
With all this inbred vulgar air, he was a dog of
great moral excellence-affectionate, faithful, honest
up to his light, with an odd humour as peculiar and
as strong as his tail. My father, in his reserved
way, was very fond of him, and there must have




Toby.


9


been very funny scenes with them, for we heard
bursts of laughter issuing from his study when they
two were by themselves: there was something in him
that took that grave, beautiful, melancholy face.
One Can fancy him in the midst of his books, and
sacred work and thoughts, pausing and looking at
the secular Toby, who was looking out for a smile
to begin his rough fun, and about to end by coursing
and gurrin' round the room, upsetting my father's
books, laid out on the floor for consultation, and
himself nearly at times, as he stood watching himand off his guard and shaking with laughter. Toby
had always a great desire to accompany my father
up to town; this my father's good taste and sense of
dignity, besides his fear of losing his friend (a vain
fear!), forbade, and as the decision of character of
each was great and nearly equal, it was often a
drawn game. Toby, ultimately, by making it his
entire object, triumphed. He usually was nowhere
to be seen on my father leaving; he however saw
him, and lay in wait at the head of the street, and
up Leith Walk he kept him in view from the opposite side like a detective, and then, when he knew
it was hopeless to hound him  home, he crossed
unblushingly over, and joined company, excessively
rejoiced of course.
One Sunday he had gone with him to church, and
left him at the vestry door. The second psalm was
given out, and my father was sitting back in the
A 2




Our Dogs.


pulpit, when the door at its back, up which he came
from the vestry, was seen to move, and gently open,
then, after a long pause, a black shining snout
pushed its way steadily into the congregation, and
was followed by Toby's entire body. He looked
somewhat abashed, but snuffing his friend, he advanced as if on thin ice, and not seeing him, put
his fore-legs on the pulpit, and behold there he was,
his own familiar chum. I watched all this, and anything more beautiful than his look of happiness, of
comfort, of entire ease when he beheld his friendthe smoothing down of the anxious ears, the swing
of gladness of that mighty tail,-I don't expect soon
to see. My father quietly opened the door, and
Toby was at his feet and invisible to all but himself;
had he sent old George Peaston, the ' minister's man,'
to put him out, Toby would probably have shown
his teeth and astonished George. He slunk home
as soon as he could, and never repeated that exploit.
I never saw in any other dog the sudden transition
from discretion, not to say abject cowardice, to
blazing and permanent valour.  From  his earliest
years he showed a general meanness of blood, inherited from many generations of starved, bekicked,
and down-trodden forefathers and mothers, resulting
in a condition of intense abjectness in all matters of
personal fear; anybody, even a beggar, by a gowl
and a threat of eye, could send him off howling by
anticipation, with that mighty tail between his legs.




Toby.


I I


But it was not always so to be, and I had the privilege of seeing courage, reasonable, absolute, and for
life, spring up in Toby at once, as did Athen6 from.the skull of Jove. It happened thus:
Toby was in the way of hiding his culinary bones
in the small gardens before his own and the neighbouring doors. Mr. Scrymgeour, two doors off, a
bulky, choleric, red-haired, red-faced man-torvo
vultu-was, by law of contrast, a great cultivator of
flowers, and he had often scowled Toby into all but
non-existence by a stamp of his foot and a glare of
his eye. One day his gate being open, in walks
Toby with a huge bone, and making a hole where
Scrymgeour had two minutes before been planting
some precious slip, the name of which on paper and
on a stick Toby made very light of, substituted his
bone, and was engaged covering it, or thinking he
was covering it up with his shovelling nose (a very
odd relic of paradise in the dog), when S. spied him
through the inner glass-door, and was out upon him
like the Assyrian, with a terrific gowl. I watched
them. Instantly Toby made straight at him with a
roar too, and an eye more torve than Scrymgeour's,
who, retreating without reserve, fell prostrate, -there
is reason to believe, in his own lobby. Toby contented himself by proclaiming his victory at the door,
and returning finished his bone-planting at his leisure, the enemy, who had scuttled behind the glassdoor, glaring at him.




Our Dogs.


From this moment Toby was an altered dog.
Pluck at first sight was lord of all; from that time
dated his first tremendous deliverance of tail against
the door, which we called 'come listen to my tail.'
That very evening he paid a visit to Leo, next
door's dog, a big, tyrannical bully and coward,which
its master thought a Newfoundland, but whose pedigree we knew better; this brute continued the same
system of chronic extermination which was interrupted
at Lochend,- having Toby down' among his feet,
and threatening him with instant death two or three
times a day. To him Toby paid a visit that very
evening, down into his den, and walked about, as
much as to say ' Come on, Macduff!' but Macduff
did not come on, and henceforward there was an
armed neutrality, and they merely stiffened up and
made their backs rigid, pretended each not to see
the other, walking solemnly round, as is the manner
of dogs. Toby worked his new-found faculty thoroughly, but with discretion.  He killed cats, astonished beggars, kept his own in his own garden
against all comers, and came off victorious in several
well-fought battles; but he was not quarrelsome or
foolhardy.  It was very odd how    his carriage
changed, holding his head up, and how much pleasanter he was at home. To my father, next to William, who was his Humane Society man, he remained
stanch. He had a great dislike to all things abnormal, as the phrase now is. A young lady of his




Toby.


I3


acquaintance was calling one day, and, relating some
distressing events, she became hysterical. Of this
Toby did not approve, and sallying from under my
father's chair, attacked his friend, barking fiercely,
and cut short the hysterics better than any sal volatile
or valerian. He then made abject apologies to the
patient, and slunk back to his chair.
And what of his end? for the misery of dogs is
that they die so soon, or, as Sir Walter says, it is
well they do; for if they lived as long as a Christian,
and we liked them in proportion, and they then died,
he said that was a thing he could not stand.
His exit was lamentable, and had a strange poetic
or tragic relation to his entrance. My father was out
of town; I was away in England. Whether it was
that the absence of my father had relaxed his power
of moral restraint, or whether through neglect of the
servant he had been desperately hungry, or most
likely both being true, Toby was discovered with
the remains of a cold leg of mutton, on which he
had made an ample meal;' this he was in vain
endeavouring to plant as of old, in the hope of its
remaining undiscovered till to-morrow's hunger returned, the whole shank-bone sticking up unmistakably.  This was seen by our excellent and Rhadamanthine grandmother, who pronounced sentence on
I Toby was in the state of the shepherd boy whom George Webster met
in Glenshee, and asked, ' My man, were you ever fou'?' ' Ay, aince'speaking slowly, as if remembering-' Ay, aince.' 'What on? ' Cauld
mutton I'




Our Dogs.


the instant; and next day, as William was leaving
for the High School, did he in the sour morning,
through an easterly haur, behold 'him whom he'
saved from drowning,' and whom, with better results
than in the case of Launce and Crab, he had taught,
as if one should say ' thus would I teach a dog,'dangling by his own chain from his own lamp-post,
one of his hind feet just touching the pavement, and
his body preternaturally elongated.
William found him dead and warm, and falling in
with the milk-boy at the head of the street, questioned
him, and discovered that he was the executioner, and
had got twopence, he-Toby's every morning's crony,
who met him and accompanied him up the street,
and licked the outside of his can-had, with an eye
to speed and convenience, and a want of taste, not
to say principle and affection, horrible still to think
of, suspended Toby's animation beyond all hope.
William instantly fell upon him, upsetting his milk
and cream, and gave him a thorough licking, to his
own intense relief; and, being late, he got from
Pyper, who was a martinet, the customary palmies,
which he bore with something approaching to pleasure. So died Toby; my father said little, but he
missed and mourned his friend.
There is reason to believe that by one of those
curious intertwistings of existence, the milk-boy was
that one of the drowning party who got the penny of
the twopence.




Wylie.


I5


WYLIE.
Our next friend was an exquisite shepherd's dog;
fleet, thin-flanked, dainty, and handsome as a small
greyhound, with all the grace of silky waving black
and tan hair. We got her thus. Being then young
and keen botanists, and full of the knowledge and
love of Tweedside, having been on every hill-top
from Muckle Mendic to Hundleshope and the Lee
Pen, and having fished every water from Tarth to
the Leithen, we discovered early in spring that young
Stewart, author of an excellent book on natural history, a young man of great promise and early death,
had found the Buxbaumia aphylla, a beautiful and
odd-looking moss, west of Newbie heights, in the
very month we were that moment in. We resolved
to start next day. We walked to Peebles, and then
up Haystoun Glen to the cottage of Adam Cairns,
the aged shepherd of the Newbie hirsel, of whom we
knew, and who knew of us from his daughter, Nancy
Cairns, a servant with Uncle Aitken of Callands. We
found our way up the burn with difficulty, as the
evening was getting dark; and on getting near the
cottage heard them at worship. We got in, and made
ourselves known, and got a famous tea, and such
cream and oat cake!-old Adam looking on us as
'clean dementit' to come out for ' a bit moss,' which,
however, he knew, and with some pride said he would
take us in the morning to the place. As we were




Our Dogs.


going into a box bed for the night, two young men
came in, and said they were 'gaun to burn the water.'
Off we set. It was a clear, dark, starlight frosty night.
They had their leisters and tar torches, and it was
something worth seeing-the wild flame, the young
fellows striking the fish coming to the light-how
splendid they looked with the light on their scales,
coming out of the darkness-the stumblings and
quenchings suddenly of the lights, as the torch-bearer
fell into a deep pool. We got home past midnight,
and slept as we seldom sleep now. In the morning
Adam, who had been long risen, and up the Hope with
his dog, when he found we had wakened, told us there
was four inches of snow, and we soon saw it was too true.
So we had to go home without our cryptogamic prize.
It turned out that Adam, who was an old man
and frail, and had made some money, was going at
Whitsunday to leave, and live with his son in Glasgow. We had been admiring the beauty and gentleness and perfect shape of Wylie, the finest collie I
ever saw, and said, ' What are you going to do with
Wylie?' "'Deed,' says he, ' I hardly ken. I canna
think o' selling her, though she's worth four pound,
and she '11 no like the toun.' I said, ' Would you
let me have her?' and Adam, looking at her fondly,
-she came up instantly to him, and made of himsaid ' Ay, I wull, if ye '11 be gude to her;' and it
was settled that when Adam left for Glasgow she
should be sent into Albany Street by the carrier.




Wylie.


1-7


She came, and was at once taken to all our hearts
-even grandmother liked her; and though she was
often pensive, as if thinking of her master and her
work on the hills, she made herself at home, and
behaved in all respects like a lady. When out with
me, if she saw sheep in the streets or road, she
got quite excited, and helped the work, and was
curiously useful, the being so making her wonderfully happy. And so her little life went on, never
doing wrong, always blithe and kind and beautiful.
But some months after she came, there was a mystery about her: every Tuesday evening she disappeared; we tried to watch her, but in vain, she was
always off by nine P.M., and was away all night,
coming back next day wearied and all over mud,
as.if she had travelled far. She slept all next day.
This went on for some months, and we could make
nothing of it.  Poor dear creature, she looked at
us wistfully when she came in, as if she would have
told us if she could, and was especially fond, though
tired.
Well, one day I was walking across the Grassmarket, with Wylie at my heels, when two shepherds
started, and looking at her, one said, ' That's her;
that's the: wonderfu' wee bitch that naebody kens.'
I asked him what he meant, and he told me that
for months past she had made her appearance by
the first daylight at the ' buchts' or sheep-pens in
the cattle-market, and worked incessantly, and to




Our Dogs.


excellent purpose, in helping the shepherds to get
their sheep and lambs in. The man said with a
sort of transport, 'She's a perfect meeracle; flees
about like a speerit, and never gangs wrang; wears
but never grups, and beats a' oor dowgs. She's a
perfect meeracle, and as soople as a maukin.' Then
he related how they all knew her, and said, ' There's
that wee fell yin; we 'll get them in noo.' They
tried to coax her to stop and be caught, but no, she
was gentle, but off; and for many a day 'that wee
fell yin' was spoken of by these rough fellows.
She continued this amateur work till she died, which
she did in peace.
It is very touching the regard the south-country
shepherds have to their dogs. Professor Syme one
day, many years ago, when living in Forres Street,
was looking out of his window, and he saw a young
shepherd striding down North Charlotte Street, as
if making for his house: it was midsummer. The
man had his dog with him, and Mr. Syme noticed
that he followed the dog, and not it him, though
he contrived to steer for the house. He came, and
was ushered into his room; he wished advice about
some ailment, and Mr. Syme saw that he had a bit
of twine round the dog's neck, which he let drop out
of his hand when he entered the room. He asked
him the meaning of this, and he explained that the
magistrates had issued a mad-dog proclamation,
commanding all dogs to be muzzled or led on pain




Rab.


S9


of death. ' And why do you go about as I saw you
did before you came in to me?' 'Oh,' said he
looking awkward, " I didna want Birkie to ken he
was tied.' Where will you find truer courtesy and
finer feeling?  He didn't want to hurt Birkie's
feelings.
Mr. Carruthers of Inverness told me a new story
of these wise sheep-dogs. A butcher from Inverness
had purchased some sheep at Dingwall, and giving
them in charge to his dog, left the road. The dog
drove them on, till coming to a toll, the toll-wife
stood before the drove, demanding her dues. The
dog looked at her, and, jumping on her back, crossed
his forelegs over her arms.  The sheep passed
through, and the dog took his place behind them,
and went on his way.
RAB.
Of Rab I have little to say, indeed have little right
to speak of him as one of ' our dogs;' but nobody
will be sorry to hear anything of that noble fellow.
Ailie, the day or two after the operation, when she
was well and cheery, spoke about him, and said she
would tell me fine stories when I came out, as I promised to do, to see her at Howgate. I asked her
how James came to get him. She told me that one
day she saw James coming down from Leadburn
with the cart; he had been away west, getting eggs




Our Dogs.


and butter, cheese and hens, for Edinburgh. She
saw he was in some trouble, and on looking, there
was what she thought a young calf being dragged,
or, as she called it, ' haurled,' at the back of the
cart. James was in front, and when he came up,
very warm and very angry, she saw that there was a
huge young dog tied to the cart, struggling and pulling back with all his might, and as she said,' lookin'
fearsome.' James, who was out of breath and temper,
being past his time, explained to Ailie, that this
' muckle brute o' a whalp' had been worrying sheep,
and terrifying everybody up at Sir George Montgomery's at Macbie Hill, and that Sir George had
ordered him to be hanged, which, however, was
sooner said than done, as 'the thief' showed his intentions of dying hard. James came up just as Sir
George had sent for his gun; and as the dog had
more than once shown a liking for him, he said
he ' wad gie him a chance;' and so he tied him to
his cart. Young Rab, fearing some mischief, had
been entering a series of protests all the way, and
nearly strangling himself to spite James and Jess,
besides giving Jess more than usual to do. 'I wish
I had let Sir George pit that charge into him, the
thrawn brute,' said James. But Ailie had seen that
in his fore-leg there was a splinter of wood, which he
had likely got when objecting to be hanged, and that
he was miserably lame. So she got James to leave
him with her, and go straight into Edinburgh. -She




Rab.


gave him water, and by. her woman's wit got his lame
paw under a door, so that he couldn't suddenly get
at her, then with a quick firm hand she plucked out
the splinter, and put in an ample meal. She went in
some time after, taking no notice of him, and he
came limping up, and laid his great jaws in her lap:
from that moment they were ' chief,' as she said,
James finding him mansuete and civil when he returned..
She said it was Rab's habit to make his appearance
exactly half-an-hour before his master, trotting in
full of importance, as if to say, c He's all right, he'll
be here.' One morning James came without him.
He had left Edinburgh very early, and in coming
near Auchindinny, at a lonely part of the road, a man
sprang out on him, and demanded his money. James,
who was a cool hand, said, C Weel-a-weel, let me get
it,' and stepping back, he said to Rab, ' Speak till
him, my man.' In an instant Rab was standing over
him, threatening strangulation if he stirred. James
pushed on, leaving Rab in charge; he looked back,
and saw that every attempt to rise was summarily put
down. As he was telling Ailie the story, up came
Rab with that great swing of his. It turned out that
the robber was a Howgate lad, the worthless son
of a neighbour, and Rab knowing him had let him
cheaply off; the only thing, which was seen by a
man from a field, was, that before letting him rise,
he quenched (pro tempore) the fire of the eyes of




Our Dogs.


the ruffian, by a familiar Gulliverian application of
Hydraulics, which I need not further particularize.
James, who did not know the way to tell an untruth,
or embellish anything, told me this as what he called
c a fact positeevely.'
WASP
Was a dark brindled bull-terrier, as pure in blood as
Cruiser or Wild Dayrell. She was brought by my
brother from Otley, in the West Riding. She was
very handsome, fierce, and gentle, with a small, compact, finely-shaped head, and a pair of wonderful eyes
-as full of fire and of softness as Grisi's; indeed she
had to my eye a curious look of that wonderful genius
-at once wild and fond. It was a fine sight to see
her on the prowl across Bowden Moor, now cantering
with her nose down, now gathered up on the top of a
dyke, -and with erect ears, looking across the wild
like a moss-trooper out on business, keen and fell.
She could do everything it became a dog to do, from
killing an otter or a pole-cat, to watching and playing
with a baby, and was as - docile to her master as she
was surly to all else.  She was not quarrelsome, but
' being in,' she would have pleased Polonius as much
as in being ' ware of entrance.' She was never beaten,
and she killed on the spot several of lhe country
bullies who came out upon her when following her
master in his rounds. She generally sent them off




Wasp.


howling with one snap, but if this was not enough,
she made an end of it.
But it was as a mother that she shone; and to see
the gipsy, Hagar-like creature nursing her occasional
Ishmael-playing with him, and fondling him all
over, teaching his teeth to war, and with her eye and
the curl of her lip daring any one but her master to
touch him, was like seeing Grisi watching her darling
'Gennaro,' who so little knew why and how much
she loved him.
Once when she had three pups, one of them died.
For two days and nights she gave herself up to trying to bring it to life-licking it, and turning it over
and over, growling over it, and all but worrying it to
awake it.  She paid no attention to the living two,
gave them no milk, flung them away with her teeth,
and would have killed them, had they been allowed
to remain with her. She was as one possessed, and
neither ate, nor drank, nor slept, was heavy and
miserable with her milk, and in such a state of excitement that no one could remove the dead pup.
Early on the third day she was seen to take the
pup in her mouth, and start across the fields towards
the Tweed, striding like a race-horse-.she plunged
in, holding up her burden, and at the middle of the
stream dropped it, and swam swiftly ashore: then
she stood and watched the little dark lump floating
away, bobbing up and down with the current, and
losing it at last far down, she made her way home,




Our Dogs.


sought out the living two, devoured them with her
love, carried them one by one to her lair, and gave
herself up wholly to nurse them: you can fancy her
mental and bodily happiness and relief when they
were pulling away-and theirs.
On one occasion my brother had lent her to a
woman who lived in a lonely house, and whose
husband was away for a time. She was a capital
watch. One day an Italian with his organ camefirst begging, then demanding money-showing that
he knew she was alone, and that he meant to help
himself, if she didn't. She threatened to ' lowse the
dowg;' but as this was Greek to -him, he pushed
on. She had just time to set Wasp at him. It was
very short work. She had him by the throat, pulled
him and his organ down with a heavy crash, the
organ giving a ludicrous sort of cry of musical pain.
Wasp, thinking this was from some creature within,
possibly a whitiret, left the ruffian, and set to work
tooth and nail on. the box. Its master slunk off,
and with mingled fury and thankfulness, watched
her disembowelling his only means of an honest
living. The woman good-naturedly took her off,
and sighed to the miscreant to make himself and
his remains scarce.  This he did with a scowl; and
was found in the evening in the village, telling a
series of lies to the watchmaker, and bribing him
with a shilling to mend his pipes-' his kist o'
whussels.'




7ock.


J O C K
Was insane from his birth: at first an amabilis insania, but ending in mischief and sudden death.
He was an English terrier, fawn-coloured; his
mother's name VAMP (Vampire), and his father's
DEMON. He was more properly daft than mad;
his courage, muscularity, and prodigious animal
spirits making him insufferable, and never allowing
one sane feature of himself any chance. No sooner
was the street door open, than he was throttling the
first dog passing, bringing upon himself and me
endless grief. Cats he tossed up into the air, and
crushed their spines as they fell.  Old ladies he
upset by jumping over their heads; old gentlemen
by running between their legs. At home, he would
think nothing of leaping through the tea-things, upsetting the urn, cream, etc., and at dinner the same
sort of thing. I believe if I could have found time
to thrash him sufficiently, and let him be a year
older, we might have kept him; but having upset
an Earl when the streets were muddy, I had to part
with him. He was sent to a clergyman in the
island of Westray, one of the Orkneys; and though
he had a wretched voyage, and was as sick as any
dog, he signalized the first moment of his arrival at
the manse, by strangling an ancient monkey, or
puggy,' the pet of the minister, -who was a




Our Dogs.


bachelor,-arid the wonder of the island.  Jock
henceforward took to evil courses, extracting the
kidneys of the best young rams, driving whole hirsels down steep places into the sea, till at last all the
guns of Westray were pointed at him, as he stood at
bay under a huge rock on the shore, and blew him
into space.  I always regret his end, and blame
myself for sparing the rod.
THE DUCHESS.
The Duchess, alias the Sputchard, the Dutchard,
the Ricapicticapic, Oz and Oz, was a rough, gnarled,
incomparable little bit of a terrier, three parts pure,
and one part-chiefly in tail and hair-cocker: her
father being Lord Rutherfurd's famous "Dandie,"
and her mother the daughter of a Skye, and a lighthearted Cocker.  The Duchess is about the size
and weight of a rabbit; but has a soul as big, as
fierce, and as faithful as had Meg Merrilees, with a
nose as black as Topsy's; and is herself every bit
as game and queer as that delicious imp of darkness
and of Mrs. Stowe. Her legs set her long slim
body about two inches and a half from the ground,
making her very like a huge caterpillar or hairy
oobit-her two eyes, dark and full, and her shining
nose, being all of her that seems anything but hair.
Her tail was a sort of stump, in size and in look
very much like a spare fore-leg, stuck in anywhere
to be near. Her colour was black above and a rich




The Duchess.


27


brown below, with two dots of tan above the eyes,
which dots are among the deepest of the mysteries
of Black and Tan.
This strange little being I had known for some
years, but had only possessed about a month. She
and her pup (a young lady called Smoot, which
means smolt, a young salmon), were given me by
the widow of an honest and drunken-as much of
the one as of the other-Edinburgh street-porter, a
native of Badenoch, as a legacy from him and a fee
from her for my attendance on the poor man's
deathbed. But my first sight of the Duchess was
years before in Broughton Street, when I saw her
sitting bolt upright, begging, imploring, with those
little rough fore leggies, and those yearning, beautiful eyes, all the world, or any one, to help her
master, who was lying ' mortal' in the kennel. I
raised him, and with the help of a ragged Samaritan,
who was only less drunk than he, I got Macpherson
-he held from   Glen Truim-home; the excited
doggie trotting off, and looking back eagerly to
show us the way. I never again passed the Porters'
Stand without speaking to her.  After Malcolm's
burial I took possession of her; she escaped to the
wretched house, but as her mistress was off to Kingussie, and the door shut, she gavea -pitiful howl or
two, and was forthwith back at my door, with an
impatient, querulous bark.
A fierier little soul never dwelt in a queerer or




28


Our Dogs.


stancher body: see her huddled up, and you would
think her a bundle of hair, or a bit of old mossy
wood, or a slice of heathery turf, with some red soil
underneath; but speak to her, or give her a cat to
deal with, be it bigger than herself, and what an is
carnation of affection, energy, and fury-what a fell
unquenchable little ruffian! And her oddities were
endless. We had and still have a dear friend,' Cousin Susan' she is called by many who are not
her cousins —a perfect lady, and, though hopelessly
deaf, as gentle and contented as ever Griselda with
the full use of her ears; quite as great a pet, in a
word, of us all as Duchie was of ours. One day we
found her mourning the death of a cat, a great playfellow of the Sputchard's, and her small grace was
with us when we were condoling with her, and we
saw that she looked very wistfully at Duchie. I
wrote on the slate, C Would you like her?' and she
through her tears said, ' You know that would never
do.' But it did do. We left Duchie that very night,
and though she paid us frequent visits, she was Cousin
Susan's for life. I fear indulgence dulled her moral
sense. She was an immense happiness to her mistress,
whose silent and lonely days she made glad with her
oddity and mirth. And yet the small creature, old,
toothless, and blind, domineered over her gentle friend
-threatening her sometimes if she presumed to remove the small Fury from the inside of her own bed,
into which it pleased her to creep. Indeed, I believe




yohn Pym.


29


it is too true, though it was inferred only, that her
mistress and friend spent a great part of a winter
night in trying to coax her dear little ruffian out of
the centre of the bed. One day the cook asked what
W.e would have for dinner: ' I would like a muttonchop, but then, you know, Duchie likes minced veal
better!' The faithful and happy little creature died
at a great age, of natural decay.
But time would fail me, and I fear patience would
fail you, my reader, were I to tell you of CRAB, of
JOHN PYM, 6f PUCK, and of the rest. CRAB, the
Mugger's dog, grave, with deep-set, melancholy eyes,
as of a nobleman (say the Master of Ravenswood) in
disguise, large visaged, shaggy, indomitable, come of
the pure Piper Allan's breed. This Piper Allan, you
must know, lived some two hundred years ago in
Cocquet Water, piping like Homer, from place to
place, and famous not less for his dog than for his
music, his news and his songs. The Earl of Northumberland, of his day, offered the piper a small
farm for his dog, but after deliberating for a day,
Allan said, ' Na, na, ma Lord, keep yir ferum; what
wud a piper do wi' a ferum?' From this dog descended Davidson (the original Dandle Dinmont) of
Hyndlee's breed, and Crab could count his kin up
to him. He had a great look of the Right Honourable Edward Ellice, and had much of his energy and
wecht; had there been a dog House of Commons,
Crab would have spoken as seldom, and been as




Our Dogs.


great a power in the house, as the formidable and
faithful time-out-of-mind member for Coventry.
JOHN PYM was a smaller dog than Crab, of more
fashionable blood, being a son of Mr. Somner's
famous SHEM, whose father and brother are said to
have been found dead in a drain into which the
hounds had run a fox. It had three entrances; the
father was put in at one hole, the son at another,
and speedily the fox bolted out at the third, but no
appearance of the little terriers, and, on digging,
they were found dead, locked in each' other's jaws;
they had met, and it being dark, and there being no
time for explanations, they had throttled each other.
John was made of the same sort of stuff, and was as
combative and victorious as his great namesake, and
not unlike him in some of his not so creditable
qualities. He must, I think, have been related to a
certain dog to whom 'life was full o' sairiousness,'
but in John's case the same cause produced an opposite effect. John was gay and light-hearted, even
when there was not ' enuff o' fechtin,' which, however,
seldom happened, there being a market every week
in Melrose, and John appearing most punctually at the
cross to challenge all comers, and being short-legged,
he inveigled every dog into an engagement by first
attacking him, and then falling down on his back,
in which posture he latterly fought and won all his
battles,
What can I say of PUCK-the thoroughbred



Dick.


31


the simple-hearted-the purloiner of eggs warm from
the hen-the flutterer of all manner of Volsciansthe bandy-legged, dear, old dilapidated buffer?  I
got him from my brother, and only parted with him
because William's stock was gone. He had to the
end of life a simplicity which was quite touching.
One summer day-a dog-day-when all dogs found
straying were hauled away to the police-office, and
killed off in twenties with strychnine, I met Puck
trotting along Princes Street with a policeman, a rope
round his neck, he looking up in the fatal, official,
but kindly countenance in the most artless and cheerful manner, wagging his tail and trotting along. In
ten minutes he would have been in the next world;
for I am one of those who believe dogs have a next
world, and why not? Puck ended his days as the
best dog in Roxburghshire. Placide quiescas /
DICK
Still lives, and long may he live! As he was never
born, possibly-he may never die; be it so, he will
miss us when we are gone. I could say much of
him, but agree with the lively and admirable Dr.
Jortin, when, in his dedication of his Remarks on
Ecclesiastical History to the then (1752) Archbishop
of Canterbury, he excuses.himself for not following
the modern custom of praising his Patron, by reminding his Grace c that it was a custom amongst the
ancients, not to sacrifice'to heroes till after sunset.' I
defer my sacrifice till Dick's sun is set.




Our Dogs.


I think every family should have a dog; it is like
possessing a perpetual baby; it is the plaything and
crony of the whole house. It keeps them all young.
All unite upon Dick.  And then he tells no tales,
betrays no secrets, never sulks, asks no troublesome
questions, never gets into debt, never coming down late
for breakfast, or coming in by his Chubb too early to
bed-is always ready for a bit of fun, lies in wait for
it, and you may, if choleric, to your relief, kick him
instead of some one else, who would not take it so
meekly, and, moreover, would certainly not, as he
does, ask your pardon for being kicked.
Never put a collar on your dog-it gets him
stolen; give him only one meal a day, and let that,
as Dame Dorothy, Sir Thomas Browne's wife, would
say, be ' rayther under.' Wash him once a week,
and always wash the soap out; and let him be carefully combed and brushed twice a week.


Orawt"tt u tdorat.




ILLUSTRA TED    EDITIONA,
Price 5s., Antique Cloth,
RAB AND HIS FRIENDS.
List of Plates.
DESIGNED BY        ENGRAVED BY
RAB, sic jacebt,..   GEORGE HARVEY, R. S. A.  T. BROWN.
THE PINCH OF SNUFF,     A. M.                   T. BROWN.
'ESS IN HER STABLE,.   (J. B.)                 LANDSEER.
AILIE DEAD,.   J. NOEL PATON, R.S.A.   R. C. BELL.
JAMES AND HIS BURDEN,   J. NOEL PATON, R.S.A.   R. C. BELL.
RAB'S GRAVE,..    GEORGE HARVEY, R. S. A.  W. MILLER.
'HIS COMPANIONS,'.    GEORGE HARVEY, R.S.A.   LUMB STOCKS.
'" Rab and his Friends" is a very remarkable book. The illustrations
are beautiful, whether of human or brute life, and, though few, tell in
themselves a comprehensive story-for they include the beauty and the
glee of childhood, the dignity and the fortitude of manhood in old age;
the faded beauty of woman in suffering, patience, and death; the awful
serenity and peace of death; the loneliness of nature and of the hill-side
grave, and the instinctive affection and solicitude of a brute nature almost
human in its love, and more than human in its fidelity.'-Morning Post,
Dec. I9.
' " Rab and his Friends" has now been published in a separate form,
with seven illustrations engraved in the highest style of art, from sketches
by Mr. George Harvey, Mr. Noel Paton, and Mrs. Blackburn; these, and
especially the frontispiece,-Jess in her Stable, Rab's Grave, and his Companions,-are worthy of the story, which is printed on beautiful paper,
and is bound with exquisite simplicity.  To almost any woman, but
especially to a girl in the middle of her teens, there could not be a more
acceptable present than "Rab and his Friends" in its present form.'Moliting Herald.
EDINBURGH: EDMONSTON AND DOUGLAS.




Now reat4, Third Edition, in 1 Vol.,' Foolscap 8vo, 7s. 6d.


HORA                   SUBSECIVAE.
BY JOHN     BROWN, M.D., F.R.S.E.
PULLOW or0 TB BOYAL COLLBOB OF PHYSICIANS, BDISBeBOH.
CONTENTS.
LETTER TO JOHN CAIRNS, D.D.       i EDUCATION THROUGH THE SENSES.
DR. CHALMERS.                      ArXINOIA-NEARNESS OF THE
DR. GEORGE WILSON.                  NOT    - PRESENCE OF     MINDHER LAST HALF-CROWN.
'ETZTOXIA: HAPPY GUESSING.
QUEEN MARY'S CHILD-GARDN.TOXIA: HAPPY GUESSING.
OUR DOGS.                          THE BLACK DWARF'S BONES.
NOTES ON ART.                      RAB AND HIS FRIENDS.
"OH, I'M WAT, WAT                  " WITH BRAINS, SIR!"
ARTHUR H. HALLAM.
Of all the John Browns, commend us to Dr. John Brown, the physician,
the man of genius, the humorist, the student of men, women, and dogs.
By means of two beautiful volumes, he has given the public a share of his
by-hours, and more pleasant hours it would be difficult to find in any life.
Dr. Brown's master-piece is the story of a dog called ' Rab.' The tale moves
from the most tragic pathos to the most reckless humour, and could not have
been written but by a man of genius. Whether it moves to laughter or tears,
it is perfect in its way, and immortalizes its author. The contents of these
Ifore Subsecivc  are very miscellaneous.  From stories of dogs, biographies of doctors and ministers, hints on medical education and practice, we
turn to criticisms on poetry and art. One of the volumes, contains the best
account of Arthur Hallam, the hero of Mr. Tennyson's Elegiacs, that is anywhere to be found. In the other, there is a very curious and racy criticism
on the poems of Henry Vaughan. -Times.
There is a pleasant article on the Arthur Henry Hallam of' In Memoriam.'..  The story of " Rab and his Friends " is a veritable gem. It is true,
simple, pathetic, and touched with an antique grace, which, in such vicinity,
charms and surprises. If any pre-Raphaelite aspirant would learn how
Dpric homeliness may be united with the ucrnost perfection and symmetry'
of form, let him read this beautiful episode...  A book of much wisdom
and beauty, and we most heartily recommend it-its cause as well as its
execution.-Fraser's Mag., April 1859.




I


__~ __I


— * ] go smi  W  7- * 7 est,,  — jjQ?  Xj
ODDS AND ENDS.
No. 4.


THE ENTERKIN.


BY JOHN


BROWN,


M.D.


AUTHOR OF 'RAB AND HIS FRIENDS,' ETC.


" Here was got the gold of which King James' bonnetf ieces were made."
EDINBURGH
EDMONSTON AND DOUGLAS
1865.


s(q ___ 


r- — C ---C —~-C




WORKS BY DR. JOHN BROWN.
Hors    Subsecivae.    Fifth Edition. 1 Volume Foolscap
8vo, Price 6s.
Letter to the Rev. John Cairns, D.D. Second
Edition. Crown 8vo, Sewed, Price 2s.
Arthur H. Hallam; Extracted from 'Horre Subsecivea.'
Foolscap, Sewed, Price 2s.; Cloth, Price 2s. 6d.
Rab and his Friends; Extracted from 'Horse Subsecivme.'  Forty-fourth Thousand.  Foolscap, Sewed,
Price 6d.
Marjorie    Fleming: A Sketch. Fifteenth Thousand.
Foolscap, Sewed, Price 6d.
Our Dogs; Extracted from c Hore Subsecivse.' Eighteenth
Thousand. Foolscap, Sewed, Price 6d.
Rab and his Friends. With Illustrations by GEORGE
HARVEY, R.S.A., J. NOEL PATON, R.S.A., and J. B.
Cheap Edition. In One Volume, Cloth, Price 3s. 6d.
'With Brains, Sir;' Extracted from 'Horae Subsecivse.'
Foolscap, Sewed, Price 6d.
Minchmoor. Price 6d.
Jeems the Door-keeper. A Lay Sermon. Price 6d.
EDINBURGH: EDMONSTON AND DOUGLAS.








THE ENTERKIN.




THE ENTERKIN
BY
JOHN BROWN, M.D.
AUTHOR OF ' RAB AND HIS FRIENDS,' ETC. ETC.


' Here was got the gold of which King James's bonnet-pieces were made.'
EDINBURGH:
EDMONSTON AN-D DOUGLAS.
MDCCCLXV.




EDINBURGH: PRINTED BY THOMAB CONSTABLE,
FOR
EDMONSTON AND DOUGLAS.


LONDON,
CAMBRIDGE,.
DUBLIN,
GLASGOW,


*... HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND CO....   MACMILLAN AND CO.
M'GLASHAN AND GILL.
JAMES MACLEHOSE.!     I




THE ENTERKIN.
IF you have a holiday, and can trust your aneroid
when it promises fair-if you can do twenty-one
miles in seven hours, and wish, moreover, to see what
you never saw before, and what you will never forgetthen take six brown biscuits in your pocket, and a return ticket to Abing/on, on the Caledonian, starting at
6.20 A.M.
There is not much from Edinburgh to Abington that
everybody does not know; but as you pass Kirknewton
you will not be the worse of remembering that the beautiful little wooded glen-' dingle or bushy dell or bosky
bourne'-on the left, into whose recesses you get a brief,
surreptitious glimpse, with the young Gogar trotting
cheerily through it, is the once famous 'PROCUL NEGOTIIS' of the great philosophic physician Dr. Cullen,
*where it was his delight to walk, and muse, and delve.
You may see the maze of his walks still. It was part
of his little estate of Ormiston Hill. Behind the present
handsome and sensible mansion the old house may still
be seen, with its magnificent outlook across the Vale of
the Almond to the Ochils, and the outlying Grampians




6


The Enterkin.


from Benlomond to Schehallion, and across the Firth to
Benarty and the Lomonds; above its door are the words
'EST ULUBRIS,' from the well-known lines:'Coelum, non animum, mutant, qui trans mare currunt;
Strenua nos exercet inertia: navibus atque
Quadrigis petimus bene vivere. Qdod petis hie est;
Est Ulubris, animus si non deficit aequus.'
This is untranslatable, but we give its bones: 'It is
clime not character they change, who run across the
sea; a strenuous idleness keeps us at work; in our
yachts and "drags" we seek a happy life. What you
seek, is here.  Even in this our Ulubrxe-our own
homely out-of-the-way Ormiston Hill, if we but bring
with us the even mind.' It is pleasant to think of this
great old Doctor, leaving his town work and books, and
giving himself up to gardening-the records of which,
in outlandish plants and shrubs, still remain-and to
farming, testing those original speculations as to soils
and manures which he expounded in his lectures on
chemistry, and which were in much anticipatory of the
new doctrines and practice. You may-to while away
the time past Carnwath and its dreary Lang Whangfancy the old Doctor, as Dr. Benjamin Rush sketches
him-' tall and slender, and with a stoop in his shoulders, his face long, his under lip protruded a little beyond the upper, his nose large, and inclined to a point
downwards, his eye of a blue colour, penetrating but
soft, and on his whole face an air of mildness and
thought'-walking in his glen, and repeating to himself
or to a friend his favourite beatitude of the old usurer




The Enterkin.


7


-' Beatus ille qui procul negotiis,' etc., or that of Politian:
'Felix ille animi, divisque simillimus ipsis,
Quem non mendaci resplendens gloria fuco
Solicitat, non fastosi mala gaudia luxus.
Sed tacitos sinit ire dies, et paupere cultu
Exigit innocuae tranquilla silentia vitae.'
We are glad, by the bye, to learn that our College of
Physicians is about to repair the tomb of this, one of
their greatest fellows; it is in the old burying-ground
of Kirknewton, and had fallen sadly into ruin and forgetfulness.
We are now past Carwath, and got to that station
which a shivering Cockney, who was kept waiting some
hours on a windy winter night in the old shed, said was
well-named Curst airs (Carstairs), and past Thankerton
-Tancred's Town-and Symington-Symon's-and are
at Abington before nine. There is Mrs. Hunter's comfortable little roadside inn, where, in the Eglinton Tournament year, the present Emperor of the French arrived
one evening alone, wet, hungry, and weary, having been
grouse-shooting all day on Crawford Muir. He asked
for a room, but was told the only one was occupied by
some young men who were surveying the Caledonian
line. He sent up his card asking to be allowed to join
them, and was requested to go to the place whence Mr.
Kinglake seems to think His Majesty has a return ticket.
He sat down by the kitchen fire, got his supper, slipped
away to bed, and was off early next morning on foot.
You now take the road to Leadhills by the Glengonar
Bur, which, like the river Pison in the Eden of Genesis,




8


The Enterkin.


' compasses the land where there is gold.' Indeed, this
region was called in olden.times 'God's treasure-house
in Scotland,' and the four petty burns in which the
precious yellow grains were found-Glengonar, Short
Cleuch, Mennock, and Wanlock-were compared to the
four rivers in the Garden of the Lord-Pison, Gihon,
Hiddekel, and Euphrates! Here was got the gold of
which King James's bonnet-pieces were made, hundreds of
workmen being then employed in its search. The glittering sand is still occasionally to be found, and every
now and then a miner, smit with the sacred hunger, takes
to the deluding, feckless work, and seldom settles to
anything again.
It is six miles of a pleasant glen road from Abington
to Leadhills-a dreary, unexpected little town-which
has lain. great part in ruins for many years, owing to the
suspension or spiritless working of the mines, during a
long, baffling House of Lords lawsuit. Things are better
now under the new Company, and we may soon see it
as tidy and purpose-like as the Duke's neighbouring
Wanlockhead. The people are thoughtful and solid,
great readers and church-goers. They have a capital
library. Like all natives of such forlorn, out-of-the-world
places, they cannot understand how any one can be
happy anywhere else; and when one of them leaves the
wild, unlovely place, they accompany him with wondering pity to the outskirts of their paradise, and never
cease to implore and expect his return for good.
If you have a keen eye, you will not fail to observe
something you never before didn't see in a Scottish vil



The Enterkin.                9
lage. There are the usual dogs and children about the
doors, but there is not a hen to be seen /-they would be
all poisoned by the lead in the gravel they pick up.
You are now some twelve hundred feet above the sea,
and as you pass the door of the good doctor-an old
Peninsular surgeon, and a thoroughbred gentleman, who
has returned to his birthplace, and is the honoured friend
and healer of that solitary upland-you may see what is
now a broken-down byre, in which the author of The
Gentle Shepherd was born.
Take now the road to the left; the other goes to Wanlockhead and down Mennock to Sanquhar; yours leads
you by the shoulder of the huge Lowthers through the
Enterkin Pass to Durrisdeer and Dalveen. The road
is little more than a bridle one. You ascend steadily
and gently, to a great height, the high hills lying all
around-not sharp and ridgy like the Highland mountains, 'curling their monstrous heads, and hanging them,'
like the fierce uplifted waves of a prodigious sea-they
are more like round-backed, lazy billows in the afterswell of a storm, as if tumbling about in their sleep.
They have all a sonsy, good-humoured, buirdly look. As
compared with Ben Lomond, our young Jacobus pronounced them 'slow.' This must, however, be a perilous road in snow and drift; for we passed several cairns,
marking where some shepherd or bewildered traveller
had stumbled on, blinded and sleepy, and taken his
final rest.
The east side of the Lowthers is an easy ascent, and
the effect of this vast expanse, stretching miles in smoothA2




IO


The Enterkin.


est surface, when covered with new-fallen snow, is said
to be wonderful; shapely and rounded like some great
recumbent creature, 'white, radiant, spotless.' At this
time of the year, as we saw it, covered with thick, short,
tawny grass and moss, one unbroken surface to the
summit of 2377 feet, it was like the short, close-grained
fur of a lioness-the hills lying like her cubs, huddling
round their mighty mother. On its summit the counties
of Lanark and Dumfries meet, as also three lairds'
lands, and here it was the custom, up to fifty years ago,
to bury suicides. Any more solitary and out-of-the-world
place could hardly be conceived. The bodies were
brought from great distances all around, and, in accordance with the dark superstitions of the time, the unblest
corpse was treated with curious indignity-no dressing
with grave-clothes, no strieking of the pitiful limbs; the
body was thrust, with the clothes it was found in, into a
rude box, not even shaped like a coffin, and hurried
away on some old shattered cart or sledge, with ropes
for harness.
One can imagine the miserable procession as it slunk,
often during night, through the villages, and past the
farmsteads, every one turning from it as abhorred. Then,
arrived at this high and desolate region, the horse was
taken out, and the weary burden dragged with pain up
to its resting-place, and carried head foremost as in
despite; then a shallow hole dug, and the long, uncouth
box pushed in-the cart and harness left to rot as
accursed. The white human bones may sometimes be
seen artong the thick short grass; and one who was




The Enterkin.


II


there more than fifty years ago remembers with a shudder
still, coming-when crossing that hill-top-upon a small
outstretched hand, as of one crying from the ground;.
this one little hand, with its thin fingers held up to
heaven as if in an agony of supplication or despair. What
a sight, seen against the spotless sky, or crossing the disc
of the waning moon!
We are now nearing the famous Enterkin Pass; a few
steps and you are on its edge, looking down giddy and
amazed into its sudden and immense depths. We have
seen many of our most remarkable glens and mountain
gorges - Glencroe and Glencoe - Glen Nevis - the
noblest of them all-the Sma' Glen, Wordsworth's Glen
Almain (Glenalmond), where Ossian sleeps, the lower
part of Glen Lyon, and many others of all kinds of sublimity and beauty; but we know nothing more noticeable, more unlike any other place, more impressive, than
this short, deep, narrow, and sudden glen. There is only
room for its own stream at its bottom, and the sides rise
in one smooth and all but perpendicular ascent to the
height, on the left, of 1895 feet, Thirstane Hill, and on
the right, of I875, the exquisitely moulded Stey Gail,
or Steep Gable-so steep that it is no easy matter
keeping your feet, and if you slip you might just as
well go over a bonafide mural precipice. 'Commodore
Rogers' would feel quite at home here; we all know
his merits -
'Commodore Rogers was a man —exceedingly brave-particular;
He climbed up very high rocks-exceedingly high-perpendicular;
And what made this the more inexpressible,
These same rocks were quite inaccessible.'




I 2               The En/erkin.
This sense of personal fear has a finely idealistic effect
upon the mind, makes it impressionable and soft, and
greatly promotes the after-enjoyment of the visit. The
aforesaid Sky Gail makes one dizzy to look at-such an
expanse of sheer descent. If a sheep dies when on its
sides it never lies still, but tumbles down into the burn;
and when we were told that Grierson of Lagg once rode
at full gallop along its slope after a fox, one feels it
necessary to believe that either he or his horse were
of Satanic lineage. No canny man or horse could do
this and live.
After our first surprise, we were greatly struck with the
likeness of the place to a picture of it by Mr. Harvey,
exhibited in our Academy in i846, and now in Mr.
Campbell of Blythswood's collection. This was one of
this great painter's first landscapes, and gives the spirit,
the idea of the place with wonderful truth and beautyits solemnity and loneliness, its still power,\ its gentle
gloom, its depth and height, its unity, its sacred peace'It is not quiet, is not ease,
But something deeper far than these,
The separation that is here
Is of the grave; and of austere,
Yet happy feelings of the dead.'
We have heard that the artist, who sat alone for hours
sketching, got so eerie,,so overpowered with the loneliness and silence, that he relieved himself from time to
time by loud shouts, and was glad to hear his own voice
or anything. It must be a wonderful place to be alone
in on a midsummer's midnight, or at its not less witching noon



The Enterkin.


13


'In such a glen as this, on such a day,
A poet might in solitude recline,
And, while the hours unheeded stole away,
Gather rich fancies in the art divine,
Great thoughts that float through Nature's silent air,
And fill the soul with hope and love and prayer.'
The glen is peculiar in being closed in, to all appearance, as much at the lower as the upper end-you feel
utterly shut in and shut out. Half-way down is a wild
cascade called Kelte's Linn-from Captain Kelte, one
of Claverhouse's dragoons, who was killed here.
Defoe's account of the affair and of its wild scene, in
his Memoirs of the Church of Scot/and, is so homely and
to the quick, that we give it in full. It is not unworthy
of Robinson Crusoe, and -is unexaggerated in local
description:' This Entrekein is a very steep, and dangerous Mountain; nor could such another Place have been easily
found in the whole Country for their Purpose; and, had
not the Dragoons been infatuated from Heaven, they
would never have entered such a Pass, without well discovering the Hill above them. The Road for above a
Mile goes winding, with a moderate Ascent on the side
of a very high, and very steep Hill, 'till on the latter
part, still ascending and the Height on the left above
them being still vastly great, the Depth on their right
below them makes a prodigious Precipice, descending
steep and ghastly into a narrow deep Bottom, only broad
enough for the Current of Water to run that descends
upon hasty Rain: From this Bottom the Mountain rises
instantly again steep as a Precipice on the other side of




The Enterkiu,


a stupendous Height. The passage on the side of the
first Hill, by which, as I said, the Way creeps gradually
up, is narrow; so that two Horsemen can but ill pass in
Front: And, if any Disorder should happen to them, so
as that they step but a little a-wry, they are in danger of
falling down the said Precipice on their right, where
there would be no stopping 'till they came to the Bottom.
And the writer of this has seen, by the Accident only of
a sudden Frost, which had made the way slippery, 3 or
4 Horses at a Time of Travellers or Carryers lying in
that dismal Bottom, which slipping in their way, have
not been able to recover themselves, but have fallen
down the Precipice, and rolled to the Bottom, perhaps,
tumbling 20 Times over, by which it is impossible but
they must be broken to pieces, ere they come to stop.
' In this Way the Dragoons were blindly marching 2
and 2 with the Minister and 5 Countrymen, whom they
had taken Prisoners, and were hauling them along to
Edinburgh; the Front of them being near the Top of
the Hill, and the rest reaching all along the steep part;
when on a sudden they heard a Man's Voice calling to
them from the side of the Hill on their left a great
Height above them.
'It was misty, as indeed it is seldom otherwise on
the Height of that Mountain; so that no Body was seen
at first: But the Commanding Officer hearing some Body
call, halted, and call'd aloud, What d'ye want, and who
areye? He had no sooner spoke, but I2 Men came in
sight upon the side, of the Hill above them, and the
Officer call'd again, What areye? and bad Stand: One




The Enterkin.


I5


of the 12 answer'd by giving the Word of Command to
his Men, Make Ready; and then calling to the Officer,
said, Sir, Will ye deliver our Minister?  The Officer
answer'd with an Oath, No, Sir, an ye were to be damn'd.
At which the Leader of the Countrymen fir'd immediately, and aim'd so true at him, tho' the Distance was
pretty great, that he shot him thro' the Head, and immediately he fell from his Horse; His Horse fluttering a
little with the Fall of his Rider, fell over the Precipice,
rolling to the Bottom, and was dash'd to pieces.
'The rest of the I2 Men were stooping to give Fire
upon the Body; when the next Commanding Officer
call'd to them to hold their Hands, and desir'd a Truce.
It was apparent, that the whole Body was in a dreadful
Consternation; Not a Man of them durst stir a Foot, or
offer to fire a Shot. And had the I2 Men given Fire
upon them, the first Volley, in all Probability, would,
have driven 20 of them down the side of the Mountain
into that dreadful Gulph at the Bottom.
'To. add to their Consternation, their 2 Scouts who
rode before, gave them  Notice, That there appear'd
another Body of Arm'd Countrymen at the Top of the
Hill in their front; which however was nothing but
some Travellers, who, seeing Troops# of Horse coming
up, stood there to let them pass, the Way being too narrow to go by them: It's true, there were about 25 more
of the Countrymen in Arms, tho' they had not appear'd,
and they had been sufficient, if they had thought fit, to
have cut this whole Body of Horse in pieces.
'But, the Officer having ask'd a Parley, and demanded,




' 6               The Enterkin.
What it was they would have? they again replied again,
Deliver our Minister.  Well, Sir, says the Officer, Ye's
get your Minister, an ye will promise to forbear firing:
Indeed we'llforbear, says the good man, We desire to hurt
none of ye: But, Sir, says he, Belike ye have more Prisoners: Indeed have we, says the Officer, and ye mon deliver them all, says the honest Man.  Well, says the
Officer, Ye shall have them then.  Immediately the Officer calls to Bring forward the Minister: But the Way
was so narrow and crooked he could not be brought up
by a Horseman, without Danger of putting them into
Disorder: So that the Officer bad them Loose him, and
let him go; which was done: So the Minister stept up the
Hill a step or two, and stood still; Then the Officer said
to him, Sir, an I let you go, I expect you promise to oblige
your People to offer no Hindrance to our March.  The
Minister promis'd them, He would do so.  Then go, Sir,
said he, You owe your Life to this Damn'd Mountain.
Rather, Sir, said the Minister, to that God that-made this
Mountain. When their Minister was come to them, their
Leader call'd again to the Officer, Sir, We want yet the
other Prisoners. The Officer gave Orders to the Rear,
where they were, and they were also deliver'd. Upon
which the Leader began to march away, when the Officer call'd again, But hold, Sir, says he, Yepromised to be
satisfied if ye had your Prisoners: I expect you'll be as
good as your Word. Indeed shall I, says the Leader, I
am just marching away; it seems he did not rightly understand the Officer.  Well, Sir, but, says the Officer, I
expect you call off those Fellows you have posted at the




The Enterkin.


17


Head of the Way. They belong not to us, says tlh honest
Man, they are unarm'd People, waiting till you pass by.
Say you so, said the Officer, Had I known that, you had
not gotten your Men so cheap, or have come off so free:
Says the Countryman, An ye arefor Battle, Sir, We are
ready for you still, if you think you are able for us, ye may
trye your Hand; we'll quit the Truce, if you like.  NO,
says the Officer, I think ye be brave Fellows, een gang
your Gate.'
In his curious account of his travels in Scotland, Defoe
gives a more detailed description of the glen and of his
own visit to it, saying with true London naivete, that the
hills on each side 'are nearly as high as the Monument! '
We now escaped by a secret path which we defy the
uninitiated to discover-we had a mountain nymph to
guide us-out of this strange, deep place, which, if it
were any longer, would weigh the traveller down with
its solemnity and seclusion-into Dalveen, down which'
flows the Carron, and the road from Edinburgh to Dum1 'From Drumlanrig I took a Turn to see the famous Pass of
Enterkin, or Introkin Hill: It is indeed, not easy to describe; but
by telling you that it ascends through a winding Bottom for near
half a Mile, and a Stranger sees nothing terrible, but vast high
Mountains on either Hand, tho' all green, and with Sheep feeding
on them to the very Top; when, on a suddain, turning short to the
left, and crossing a Rill of Water in the Bottom, you mount the
Side of one of those Hills, while, as you go on, the Bottom in
which that Water runs down from between the Hills, keeping its
Level on your Right, begins to look very deep, till at Length it is
a Precipice horrible and terrifying; on the left the Hill rises almost
perpendicular, like a Wall; till being come about half Way, you
have a steep, unpassable Height on the Left, and a monstrous Casm
or Ditch on your Right; deep, almost, as the Monument is high,




i8


The Enterkin.


fries, by,Biggar and Thornhill. It is an exquisite scene
-great steep green hills opening and shutting the winding valley. It is well known as one of the finest and
most romantic passes in the south of Scotland-it must
have been something worth one's while to descend it on
the box seat'in the old four-horse-coach days. It is six
miles from Leadhills to Lower Dalveen, and nine from
that to Elvanfoot, where you must catch the train due
at 4.20-most provokingly early. Any one fearing lest
the twenty-one miles may be too much for his legs or
his time, may shorten the walk two or more miles by
going to Elvanfoot and walking up the Elyan, instead of
the Glengonar Burn. If he has our sky and our willingness to be happy, he will mark the Enterkin day with a
white stone.
We have said that the miners at Leadhills are a reading,
a hard-reading people; and to any one looking into the
catalogue of their ' Reading Society,' selected by the men
themselves for their own uses and tastes, this will be manifest. We have no small gratification in holding their diploma of honorary membership-signed by the preses and
clerk, and having the official seal, significant of the craft
and the Path, or Way, just broad enough for you to lead your
Horse on it, and, if his Foot slips, you have nothing to do but let
go the Bridle, lest he pulls you with him, and then you will have
the Satisfaction of seeing him dash'd to Pieces, and lye at the
Bottom with his four Shoes uppermost. I pass'd twice this Hill
after this, but the Weather was good, and the Way dry, which
made it safe; but one of our Company was so frighted with it,
that in a Kind of an Extasy, when he got to the Bottom, he look'd
back, and swore heartily that he would never come that Way again.'




The Enterkin.                19
of the place —of this, we venture to say, one of the oldest and best village-libraries in the kingdom, having been
founded in I74I, when the worthy miners of that day,
headed by James Wells and clerked by William Wright,
did, on the 23d November, 'condescend upon certain
articles and laws'-as grave and thorough as if they were
the constitution of a commonwealth, and as sturdily independent as if no Earl was their superior and master.
'.It is hereby declared that no right is hereby given, nor
shall at any time be given to the said Earl of Hopetoun,
or his aforesaids, or to any person or persons whatever,
of disposing of any books or other effects whatever belonging to the Society, nor of taking any concern with
the Society's affairs,' etc. As an indication of the wild
region and the distances travelled, one of the rules is,
'that every member not residing in Leadhills shall be
provided with a bag sufficient to keep out the rain.'
Here is the stiff, covenanting dignity cropping out'Every member shall (at the annual meeting) deliver
what he hath to say to the preses; and if two or more
members attempt to speak at a tirme, the preses shall
determine who shall speak first;' and 'members guilty
of indecency, or unruly,,obstinate behaviour' are to be
punished 'by fine, suspension, or exclusion, according
to the nature of the transgression.'. The Westminster
Divines could not have made a tighter job.
If Charles Lamb had, by any strange chance-such
as dropping from a balloon, hailing from Hampsteadstrayed into this reading and howking village, and put
up at Mr. Noble's for a day or two, with his pipe (of




20                The Enterkin.
peace and more, for he used to say with a sad smile
between the earnest puffs, ' Other men smoke for pleasure; I (puff) smoke (puff) for my (puff) sal- (puff) vava-vation,'1) well-provisioned, and a modicum of old
Madeira and Hollands, and had he been driven into
his inn by stress of weather and fear of the mountains
(we all remember how, when visiting Southey at Keswick,
he ran away from Skiddaw and the rest of the big fellows, back to ' the sweet security of streets'),-how he
would have enjoyed this homely, working-man's library
with its 2200 volumes! Fancy him and 'Papaverius'
(De Quincey) and 'The Bookhunter' storm-stayed, all
three here, and discussing over their toddy, and through
their fragrant reek, its multifarious books, from Cudworth's 'Intellectual System' and Grotius 'on Christianity,' to Spurgeon's ' Gems' and Wylie's 'Seventh Vial.'
Fancy Carloagnulus beseeching The Bookhunter to enlighten him upon the Marrow Controversy, and the Old
and New Lights, and the Burghers and Antiburghers, the
Glassites, Sandemanians, Cameronians, and U.P.'s; and
'Papaverius' entering curiously and delectably upon
King's 'Origin of Evil,' Thomas a Kempis, or 'Aspasia
Vindicated.' To hear 'Elia'2 inquiring mildly and stam'When Dr. Parr,-who took only the finest tobacco, used to
half fill his pipe with salt, and smoked with a philosophic calmness,
— saw Lamb smoking the. strongest preparation of the weed, puffing
out smoke like some furious enchanter, he gently laid down his
pipe and asked how he had acquired his power of smoking at such
a rate? Lamb replied, " I toiled after it, Sir, as some men toil after
irtue." '-Talfourd's Lif of Lamb.
2 See note, p. 22.




The Enterkin.


21


meringly at The Bookhunter, as he turned over Erskine's
'Principles of the Law of Scotland,' whether 'multiplepoinding' was a phrase which his friend Pierce Eganhistorian of the prize-ring- might not advantageously
adopt; and during the mixing of another tumbler, asking
his opinion as to the two Histories of the Concilium Trzidenmtinum, in order to edge in a small joke of Burtonupon-Trent. Then think of the three discussing, with a
single dip and a blazing fire, ' Humphrey Clinker,' The
Adventures of a Guinea,' and The Bravo of Bohemia.'
Fancy their awe when they found upwards of 140 volumes of sermons, graduating from Butler, Stemrne, Horsley, and Robert Hall, down to Drs. Dodd and Cumming.
How Charles would expatiate upon 'Queen Street, a
poem'-what 'on earth' it might mean and what it might
not;-how curious he would be upon Clarke's 'Hundred Wonders' and 'Extracts of C. L., Esq.'-were these
his Essays taken down in his sleep-all unbeknown to
himself? Who wrote 'Juniper Jack'? and 'The Land
of Sinim'? and who ever allowed 'Count Fathom' to
slip into such decent company? But seriously, we have
been greatly struck with the range of subjects and of
authors in this homely catalogue; and it is impossible
to think with anything but respect of the stout-hearted,
strong-brained men who, after being in the bowels of
the earth all day, sat down to wrestle with John Owen
or Richard Baxter, or dream of heaven and holiness
with Scougall and Leighton, or refresh themselves with
Don Quixote, the Antiquary, the Fool of Quality, and
Daubuisson on ' The Basalts of Saxony'-besides evis



22


The Enterkin.


cerating, with the help of Jonathan Edwards and
Andrew Fuller, their own gloomy and masculine theology as mercilessly as they did the stubbqrn galena and
quartz.
NOTE BY 'THE BOOKHUNTER' ON PAPAVERIUS.
Papaverius would have scunnered at the decent 'good
book' appearance of Fisher's ' Marrow,' or Gibb's 'Display of the Secession Testimony.' To bring him round
about to the manner by a learned-like congenial path, I
would have put into his hands, to bring him up to the
17th century, the ' Tremulantes sivi Quakeri,' and the
Inde&endentes, by means of 'Speculum Abominationum,'
and then have shipped him in the 'Histoire des Sectes
Religieuses' of Bishop Gregoire, where he would have
found 'Methodistes, Seceders, Burghers, Reliefs, Bereans,
Glassites, Balchristes, Hutchensonians, Tunkers, Shakers,
Skevi-kares, Buchanistes, Brugglerians, Mamillaires, Venchoristes,' with others equally familiar and unfamiliar, all
discussed in fluent French.




The Enterkin.


23


SINCE our Leadhills ploy, four of us met one September morning at Abington to breakfast; and
took our way up Camps Water and down Glen Breck
into Tweed. It was a grey, demure day, gentle and
serious,-' caught at the point where it stops short of
sadness;' the clouds well up and curdled-lying becalmed
' O'er the broad fields of heaven's bright wildernesse;'
what of sunshine there was lay on the distant hills,
moving slowly, and every now and then making darker
the depths of some far-off Hope. There is something
marvellous in the silence of these upland solitudes; the
burns slip away without noise; there are no trees, few
birds; and it so happened that day that the sheep were
nibbling elsewhere, and the shepherds all unseen. There
was only 'the weird sound of its own stillness,' as we
walked up the glen. It was refreshing and reassuring,
after the din of the town, this out-of-the-world, unchangeable place.
We got upon the Moffat road two or three miles
above Tweedsmuir Kirk; and one of us, who had not
been there for three-and-thirty years-when,-taking his
time,-he walked from Edinburgh to Kendal and back
again,-cQuld not but be moved at the deserted look of
that old mail road-hardly a trace of wheels, -like the
bed of a stream that has ceased to flow,-' the sound of
a' voice that is still.' Nature winning it back to herself.
Fancy the glory of coming there upon the well-appointed




24               The Enterkin.
Royal Mail, with the music of its team, the guard on his
little seat, with its black hairy skin, his horn, and his
tremendous blunderbuss. What compactness! what a
unity, power, and purpose about the whole organism!.
what stories we used to hear of what the driver could
do, and what the guard had done.' How Willie Lawson snuffed a candle, and not out, with his whip at
Penicuik Inn, on a 'lown' night before starting.  How
the guard, having in vain sounded his horn; at Harestanes toll, when some disorderly coal-carts were stopping the royal way, their carters drinking, heedless inside-blew out the brains of the first horse,'and got the
gate cleared forthwith. And what a peremptory, 'dread'
horn it was, bringing somehow Fontarabia into the
schoolboy head.
One guard I remember well-M'George. He had
been in the army, and was a gentleman-ster and'not
given to speak; even with his companion the driver he
would let a whole day pass in silence-a handsome, firm,
keen face. I remember well, too, when I had gone
day after day to meet the Mail, to be taken into Edinburgh to school after my vacation among the hills, and
to my rapture the Mail was full, and we came back rejoicing at the respite.  'Is she full ' asked again my
grave and dear old uncle, six feet and more on his
soles. 'Yes,' said M'George, with a gentle grin, and
1 An Edinburgh clergyman, of a rare and quaint genius, was one
day seen gazing at the Carlisle Mail as it came thundering down
The Bridges. ' What are you thinking of?' said a reverend brother.
I'm thinkin' that, next to preachin' the everlastin' gospel, I would
like to drive the Mail.'




The Enterkin.


25


looking me in the face; ' she's full of emptiness!'
whereupon the High School boy was bundled inside,
and left to his meditations. Our guard, I must say,
came and looked in upon me at each stage, comforting
me greatly with some jargonelle pears, the smell and relish of which I can feel now. I fell asleep, of course,
and when we stopped at the Black Bull, found myself
snug in the potentate's great-coat. All this impressed
me the more, when I heard of his death many years
after. It was a snow-storm-a night of wild drift —in
mid-winter: nothing like it for years. The Mail from
Dumfries was late, and the townspeople of Moffat had
gathered at Mrs. Cranstoun's inn waiting for it. Up it
came. They crowded round M'George, entreating him
not to proceed-'At Tweedshaws it'll be awful.' But
he put them aside. 'They' (meaning the Post-Office
authorities) 'blamed me once; they'll never blame me
again.' And, saddling the two strongest horses, he and
the driver mounted and took their way into the night,
stumbling dumbly up the street The driver returned,
having, at the Beef-stand,-a wild hollow in the hills,five miles out of Moffat, given it up in despair, and in
time; M'George plunging on, and not to be spoken to.
The riderless horse came back at midnight.  Next
morning at daybreak-the wind hushed, the whole
country silent and white-a shepherd saw on the heights
at Tweedshaws something bright like a flame. He
made his way to it-it was the morning sun shining on
the brass-plate of the post-bags, hung up on a bit of
paling-we have seen the very stake-and out of the




26


The Enterkin.


snow stretched a hand, as if pointing to the bags:
M'George dead, and as the shepherd said, 'wi' a kind
o' a pleesure on his face.'
'Stem daughter of the voice of God,
We know not anything so fair
As is the smile upon thy face.'
From Tweedsmuir we walked by the Bield, the old
inn, where the Moffat carriers baited or slept; and could
not help recalling a story worthy of Humphrey Clinker.
Campbell the poet, in his young days, had walked out
thus far, and had got snug into bed after his tumbler of
toddy, when there was a knock at the door. 'Come
in;' and behold, with a candle in her hand, stood the
pretty maiden-who had given him his supper-in her
short-gown and petticoat. 'Please, sir, could ye tak' a
neebor into yer bed ' 'With all my heart,' said the
imaginative, susceptible poet, starting gaily up. 'Thank
ye, sir, for the Moffat carrier's just come in a' wat, and
there's no a single ither place.' Up came the huge and
reeking man; exit the dainty little woman.
There, on the river side, is where once was Linkumdoddie, where Willie Wastle dwelt. There is the Logan
Water, which, with superb exaggeration, the poet says,
Willie's wife's face ' wad file.'
There is Mossfennan 'yett,' where 'lichtit doon' the
lovers of the Lass of the Logan-lea. This ballad, which
is still remembered as being sung entire, is gone, we fear
irrecoverably, all but a few broken stanzas, for which we
have to thank Miss Watson, who, in her By-gone Days
1 Wordsworth's Ode to Deity.




The Enterkin.


27


in our Village, has so well described the old-world life of
this pastoral region:'Some say that I lo'e young Polmood,
An' some say he lo'es na me;
But I think I'm a match for the best o' his blude,
Though I had never a ewe on the Logan-lea.
'For wooers I've had braw young men,
Booted and spurr'd as ye may see,
A' lichtin at Mossfennan yett,
Doon by the side o' the Logan-lea.
'Three cam east, and three cam west,
An' three cam out frae the north countrie,
The lave cam a' frae Moffat-side,
An' lichtit at the Logan-lea.
'John Paterson comes frae Holms-water head,
An' he did come to visit me,
An' he cam in by the Mere-cleugh head,
Wi' his spotted hounds and spaniels three.
' Graham o' Slipperfield, on his grey mere,
Charlie, an' his pistols clear,
Young Polmood, wi' his hounds three,
Will ne'er heir a ewe on the Logan-lea.'
We closed our Minchmoor with The Bush aboon Traquair, -we close The Enterkin with the Cry from
Craigellachie, which our companion the author recited
with impassioned cadence, as we walked down Tweed
to Broughton. After much urgency, we got him to put
it in the Scotsman, from which we now take it.




28


T/te Enterkin.


May we not enjoy its fervour and beauty, and at the
same time rejoice that the cottagers at Kingussie are
getting their oatmeal and coals one-half cheaper, since
the iron horse took his way down Badenoch?
A CRY FROM     CRAIGELLACHIE.
(Written after travellingfor thefirst time to Inverness by the
Highland Railway last August.)
LAND of Bens, and Glens, and Corries,
Headlong rivers, ocean-floods!
Have we lived to see this outrage
On your haughty solitudes?
Yea! there burst invaders stronger,
On the mountain-barrier'd land,
Than the Ironsides of Cromwell,
Or the bloody Cumberland!
Spanning Tay and curbing Tummel,
Hewing with rude mattocks down
Killiecrankie's birchen chasm,What reck they of old renown!
Cherish'd names! how disenchanted!
Hark the railway porter roar,
Ho! Blair-Athole I Dalnaspidal!
Ho! Dalwhinnie! Aviemore!
Garry, cribb'd with mound and rampart,
Up his chafing bed we sweep,
Scare from his lone lochan-cradle
The charmed immemorial sleep.




The Enterkin.                 29
Grisly, storm-resounding Badenoch,
With grey boulders scatter'd o'er,
And cairns of forgotten battles,
Is a wilderness no more.
Ha! we start the ancient silence,
Thundering down the long incline
Over Spey and Rothiemurchus'
Forests of primaeval pine.
Boar of Badenoch! Sow of Athole!
Hill by hill behind us cast;
Rock, and craig, and moorland reelingScarce Craigellachie stands fast.1
Dark Glen More and clov'n Glen Feshie,
Loud along these desolate tracts,
Hear the shriek of whistle louder
Than their headlong cataracts.
Strange to them the train-but stranger
The mixed throng it huddles forthStrand and Piccadilly emptied
On the much-enduring North.
Cockneys, Frenchmen, swells, and tourists,
Motley-garb'd and garish crew!
Belted pouches, knickerbockers,
Silken hose and patent shoe.
While from carriage-window gazing,
Eye-glass'd damsels, yawning, drawl,
1 Stand fast Craigellachie,' is the war-cry of the Clan Grant.




30


The Enterkin. '


'Strange these names of yours-Braeriach,
Ben-Mac-Dhui, Cairntoul.'
What to them are birk-tree fragrance,
Pine-wood scents, bog-myrtle balm!
What the burns down corries sounding,
Or the solemn mountain calm!
Point not them to Loch-an-Eilan,
Lochindorbh's grim island hold;
Tell them not wild tales of Comyn,
Or the Badenoch Wolf of old.
O Caimgorum! 0 Braeriach!
Roll ye blinding swathes of cloud
Down your crags, that these insult not
Your majestic foreheads proud.
On, still on-let drear Culloden
For clan-slogans hear this scream,Shake the woods by Beauly river,
Startle beauty-haunted Dhruim.
Northward still the iron horses,
Naught may stay their destined path,
Till their snort, by Pentland surges,
Stun the cliffs of far Cape Wrath.
Must then pass, quite disappearing
From their glens, the ancient Gael?
In and in must Saxon struggle?
Southron, Cockney more prevail?




The Enterkin.


3


Clans long gone, and pibrochs going,
Shall the patriarchal tongue
From these mountains fade for ever,
With its names and memories hung?
Oh! you say, it little recketh,Let the ancient manners go,
Heaven will work, through their destroying,
Some end greater than you know!
Be it so! but will Invention,
With her smooth mechanic arts,
Raise, when gone, the old Highland warriors,
Bring again warm Highland hearts?
Nay! whate'er of good they herald,
Whereso comes that hideous roar,
The old charm is disenchanted,
The old Highlands are no more!
Yet, I know, there lie, all lonely,
Still to feed thought's loftiest mood,
Countless glens, undesecrated,
Many'an awful solitude!
Many a bur, in unknown corries,
Down dark linns the white foam flings,t
Fringed with ruddy-berried rowans,
Fed from everlasting springs.
Still there sleep unnumber'd lochans,
Craig-begirt 'mid deserts dumb,
I




32


The Enterkin.
Where no human road yet travels,
Never tourist's foot hath come!
Many a Scuir, like bald sea-eagle,
Hoary-scalp'd with boulder piles,
Stands against the sunset, eyeing
Ocean and the outmost Isles.
If e'en these should fail, I'll get me
To some rock roar'd round by seas,
There to drink calm nature's freedom,
Till they bridge the Hebrides!
SHLIABHAIR.
(Anglice, Mountaineer).
EDINBURGH: T. CONSTABLE,
PRINTER TO THE QUEEN, AND TO THE UNIVERSITY.




Second Edition,
Now Ready, in One Vol. Fcap. 8vo, rnce 5s.,
DAY DREAMS OF A SCHOOLMASTER
BY D'ARCY W. THOMPSON,
PROFESSOR OF GREEK IN QUEEN'S COLLEGE, GALWAY.
"We advise our readers to make early acquaintance with these Day
Dreams. Learning and philosophy have seldom put on a more attractive garb; nor have we ever felt more convinced than by Mr. Thompson's arguments that erudition, however necessary, is the least part of
a teacher's qualifications."-Athenceum.
"Our Schoolmaster is no ordinary dreamer; neither is our Daydreamer an ordinary schoolmaster. It is not often that we find members
of the scholastic profession making contributions to real literature, such
as the volume before us. For in spite of a good deal of what we must
take leave to call mannerism, there can be no doubt about Mr. D'Arcy
Thompson's genuine literary power. And the mannerism, in this case,
really belongs to the man. It is part of his individuality. It is not,
we believe, a mere artifice of style,-the toggery of office assumed for
the nonce. It is of the writer's essence, and therefore can be called
mannerism only in a limited sense. The book is full of this strong
personal flavour. We are sometimes tempted, while we read, to call it
egotism; but the term would be apt to mislead, for it is that natural,
unconscious egotism, which springs from honest earnestness of character, and is therefore void of offence. We have said so much to indicate
the general character of the work. Education, in all its aspects and
phases, is its subject; but it does not belong to educational literature
merely. It takes a much wider range, and deserves a much higher
place. At times you think you are reading an autobiography; at
others, a history of school systems; at others, a philosophy of education. The manner in which these various elements are blended renders
the book a remarkable one. It is a book to be read by parents fully
as much as by schoolmasters. It is full of sound sense and originality;
and there is nothing more original in it than its vein of poetic sentiment, and its telling touches of caustic humour."-Museum.
EDINBURGH: EDMONSTON AND DOUGLAS.




iI:


ODDS AND ENDS
Grave or Humorous, a Series,
Price 6d. each.
1. SKETCHES     OF HIGHLAND      CHARACTER.
SHEEP FARMERS AND DROVERS.
2. OUR CONVICTS.
BY A PRACTICAL HAND.
3. WAYSIDE THOUGHTS of an Asophophilosopher.
BY D'ARCY W. THOMPSON, PROFESSOR OF GREEK, QUEEN'S COLLEGE,
GALWAY.
4.THE ENTERKIN.
BY JOHN BROWN, M.D.
In Preparation,
ESSAYS BY AN OLD MAN.
No. I.-IN MEMORIAM —VANITAS VANITATUM-FRIENDS.
ESSAYS BY AN OLD MAN.
No. II.-CHRISTMAS DAY-LIMITED MAIL-TONGUE AND PEN.
BIBLIOMANIA.
ADAM    FERGUSON, MINISTER OF LOGIERAIT.
AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL FRAGMENT. FROM 1672 TO 1715.
SKETCHES      OF   THE    REFORMATION        IN
ENGLAND.
BY THE RhV. WILLIAM HANNA, D.D., AUTHOR OF THEI 'LIPI
OF CHALMERS.
To be followed by other Papers.
EDINBURGH: EDMONSTON AND DOUGLAS..-...- -__




RABL


AND HIS FRIENDS


By JOHN BROWN, M.D.


EDMONSTON AND DOUGLAS, EDINBURGH.
HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND CO., LONDOQX '




PRICE SIXPENCE.


JEEMS THE DOORKEEPER:
A LAY SERMON.
BY DR. JOHN BROWN.
From the Reader.
This " Lay Sermon" will be read by thousands of thousands, for
the Rembrandtish power which the author of s" Rab and his
Friends " throws into everything he writes is as effective as ever.
From the Banffshire Reporter.
It is absolutely impossible not to relish the writings of Dr. John
Brown. They have all the sterling ring of true honest warmth of
heart-true Scotch feeling, Scotch force, and Scotch humour.
From the Carlisle Express.
The little book requires no recommendation: a host of intelligent readers will have been eager to welcome it without waiting
for any reviewer's opinion. No cultivated mind can afford to dispense with supplies from the store of wisdom which the author of
Horce Subsecivo is hoarding up for all time.
From the Coleraine Ohroniole.
Another unique "Lay Sermon" from the unapproachable pen
of Dr. Brown, who has done so much towards making us acquainted
with Scottish character.
From the Carlow Post.
Those who wish to pass a truly happy hour will do well to read
the story of " Jeems."
EDINBURGH: EDMONSTON AND DOUGLAS.




RAB ANVD HIS FRIENDS
BY JOHN BROWN, M.D.


EDINBURGH:
EDMONSTON AND DOUGLAS.
187I.




Extractedfromn " HORE SUBSECIVE: Locke and Sydenham,
with other Occasional Papers."




To my TWO FRIENDS
at Busby, Renfrewshire,
In Remembrance of a Journey from   Carstairs Junction
to Toledo and back.








RAB AND HIS FRIENDS.


FOUR-AND-THIRTY years ago, Bob
Ainslie and I were coming up Infirmary
Street from the High School, our heads together, and our arms intertwisted, as only lovers
and boys know how, or why.
When we got to the top of the street, and
turned north, we espied a crowd at the Tron
Church. "A    dog-fight!" shouted Bob, and
was off; and so was I, both of us all but praying that it might not be over before we got
up! And is not this boy-nature? and human
nature too? and don't we all wish a house on
fire not to be out before we see it? Dogs like
fighting; old Isaac says they "delight" in it,
and for the best of all reasons; and boys are
not cruel because they like to see the fight.
They see three of the great cardinal virtues of
dog or man-courage, endurance, and skill-in




6


Rab and his Friends.


intense action. This is very different from a
love of making dogs fight, and enjoying, and
aggravating, and making gain by their pluck.
A boy-be he ever so fond himself of fighting,
if he be a good boy, hates and despises all this,
but he would have run off with Bob and me
fast enough: it is a natural, and a not wicked
interest, that all boys and men have in witnessing intense energy in action.
Does any curious and finely-ignorant woman
wish to know how Bob's eye at a glance announced a dog-fight to his brain? He did not,
he could not see the dogs fighting; it was a
flash of an inference, a rapid induction. The
crowd round a couple of dogs fighting, is a
crowd masculine mainly, with an occasional
active, compassionate woman, fluttering wildly
round the outside, and using her tongue and
her hands freely upon the men, as so many
cc brutes;" it is a crowd annular, compact, and
mobile; a crowd centripetal, having its eyes
and its heads all bent downwards and inwards,
to one common focus.
Well, Bob and I are up, and find it is not
over: a small thoroughbred, white bull-terrier,
is busy throttling a large shepherd's dog, unac



Rab and his Friends.


7


customed to war, but not to be trifled with.
They are hard at it; the scientific little fellow
doing his work in great style, his pastoral
enemy fighting wildly, but with the sharpest of
teeth and a great courage. Science and breeding, however, soon had their own; the Game
Chicken, as the premature Bob called him,
working his way up, took his final grip of poor
Yarrow's throat,-and he lay gasping and done
for. Hismaster, a brown, handsome, big young
shepherd from Tweedsmuir, would have liked to
have knocked down any man, would " drink up
Esil, or eat a crocodile," for that part, if he
had a chance: it was no use kicking the little
dog; that would only make him hold the closer.
Many were the means shouted out in mouthfuls, of the best possible ways of ending it.
" Water! " but there was none near, and many
cried for it who might have got it from the
well at Blackfriars Wynd. " Bite the tail!"
and a large, vague, benevolent, middle-aged
man, more desirous than wise, with some
struggle got the bushy end of rarrow's tail into
his ample mouth, and bit it with all his might.
This was more than enough for the muchenduring, much-perspiring shepherd, who, with




8


Rab and his Friends.


a gleam of joy over his broad visage, delivered
a terrific facer upon our large, vague, benevolent, middle-aged friend,-who went down like
a shot.
Still the Chicken holds; death not far off.
" Snuff! a pinch of snuff!" observed a calm,
highly-dressed young buck, with an eye-glass
in his eye.  "Snuff, indeed!" growled the
angry crowd, affronted and glaring. " Snuff!
a pinch of snuff! " again observes the buck, but
with more urgency; whereon were produced
several open boxes, and from a mull which may
have been at Culloden, he took a pinch, knelt
down, and presented it to the nose of the
Chicken. The laws of physiology and of snuff
take their course; the Chicken sneezes, and
Yarrow is free!
The young pastoral giant stalks off with
Yarrow in his arms, —comforting him.
But the Bull Terrier's blood is up, and his
soul unsatisfied; he grips the first dog he meets,
and discovering she is not a dog, in Homeric
phrase, he makes a brief sort of amende, and is
off. The boys, with Bob and me at their head,
are after him: down Niddry Street he goes,
bent on mischief; up the Cowgate like an




Rab and his Friends.


9


arrow-Bob and I, and our small men, panting
behind.
There, under the single arch of the South
Bridge, is a huge mastiff, sauntering down the
middle of the causeway, as if with his hands
in his pockets: he is old, grey, brindled, as
big as a little Highland bull, and has the
Shaksperian dewlaps shaking as he goes.
The Chicken makes straight at him, and
fastens on his throat. To our astonishment,
the great creature does nothing but stand still,
hold himself up, and roar-yes, roar; a long,
serious, remonstrative roar. How is this? Bob
and I are up to them. He is. muzzled! The
bailies had proclaimed a general muzzling,
and his master, studying strength 'and economy
mainly, had encompassed his huge jaws in a
home-made apparatus, constructed out of the
leather of some ancient breechin. His mouth
was open as far as it could; his lips curled up in
rage-a sort of terrible grin; his teeth gleaming, ready, from out the darkness; the strap
across his me uth tense as a bowstring; his
whole frame stif swith indignation and surprise;
his roar asking us all round, " Did you ever see
the like of this?" He looked a statue of anger
and astonishment, done in Aberdeen granite.
A 2




IO


Rab and his Friends.


We soon had a crowd: the Chicken held on.
A knife!" cried Bob; and a cobbler gave
him his knife: you know the kind of knife,
worn away obliquely to a point, and always
keen. I put its edge to the tense leather; it
ran before it; and then!-one sudden jerk of
that enormous head, a sort of dirty mist about
his mouth, no noise,-and the bright and fierce
little fellow is dropped, limp, and dead. A
solemn pause: this was more than any of us
had bargained for. I turned the little fellow
over, and saw he was quite dead: the mastiff
had taken him by the small of the back like a
rat, and broken it.
He looked down at his victim appeased,
ashamed, and amazed; snuffed him all over,
stared at him, and taking a sudden thought,
turned round and trotted off. Bob took the
dead dog up, and said, " John, we'll bury him
after tea." " Yes," said I, and was off after the
mastiff. He made up the Cowgate at a rapid
swing; he had forgotten some engagement.
He turned up the Candlemaker Row, and
stopped at the Harrow Inn.
There was a carrier's cart ready to start, and
a keen, thin, impatient, black-a-vised little man,




Rab and his Friends.


I I


his hand at his grey horse's head, looking about
angrily for something. " Rab, ye thief!" said
he, aiming a kick at my great friend, who drew
cringing up, and avoiding the heavy shoe with
more agility than dignity, and watching his
master's eye, slunk dismayed under the cart,his ears down, and as much as he had of tail
down too.
What a man this must be-thought I-to
whom my tremendous hero turns tail! The
carrier saw the muzzle hanging, cut and useless,
from his neck, and I eagerly told him the story,
which Bob and I always thought, and still
think, Homer, or King David, or Sir Walter,
alone were worthy to rehearse. The severe
little man was mitigated, and condescended to
say, "Rab, ma man, puir Rabbie,"-whereupon
the stump of a tail rose up, the ears were
cocked, the eyes filled, and were comforted; the
two friends were reconciled. " Hupp!" and a
stroke of the whip were given to Jess; and off
went the three.
Bbb and I buried the Game Chicken that
night (we had not much of a tea) in the backgreen of his house, in Melville Street, No. 17,




1 2


Rab and his Friends.


with considerable gravity and silence; and
being at the time in the Iliad, and, like all
boys, Trojans, we called him Hector of course.
SIX years have passed,-a long time for a
boy and a dog: Bob Ainslie is off to the
wars; I am a medical student, and clerk at
Minto House Hospital.
Rab I saw almost every week, on the
Wednesday; and we bad much pleasant intimacy. I found the way to his heart by
frequent scratching of his huge head, and an
occasional bone. When I did not notice nim
he would plant himself straight before me, and
stand wagging that bud of a tail, and looking
up, with his head a little to the one side. His
master I occasionally saw; he used to call
me " Maister John," but was laconic as any
Spartan.
One fine October afternoon, I was leaving
the hospital) when I saw the large gate open,
and in walked Rab, with that great and easy




Rab and his Friends.


13


saunter of his. He looked as if taking general
possession of the place; like the DulAe of
Wellington entering a subdued city, satiated
with victory and peace. After him came Jess,
now white from age, with her cart; and in it
a woman, carefully wrapped up,-the carrier
leading the horse anxiously, and looking back.
When he saw me, James (for his name was
James Noble) made a curt and grotesque
boo," and said, cc Maister John, this is the
mistress; she's got a trouble in her breestsome kind o' an income we're thinkin."
By this time I saw the woman's face; she
was sitting on a sack filled with straw, her
husband's plaid round her, and his big-coat,
with its large white metal buttons, over her feet.
I never saw a more unforgetable face-pale,
serious, lonely, delicate, sweet, without being at
all what we call fine. She looked sixty, and had
on a mutch, white as snow, with its black
ribbon; her silvery, smooth hair setting off her
dark-grev eyes-eyes such as one sees only
twice or thrice in a lifetime, full of suffering,
1 It is not easy giving this look by one word; it was
expressive of her being so much of her life alone.




T4


Rab and his Friends.


full also of the overcoming of it: her eyebrows black and delicate, and her mouth firm,
patient, and contented, which few mouths ever
are.
As I have said, I never saw a more beautiful
countenance, or one more subdued to settled
quiet. " Ailie," said James, " this is Maister
John, the young doctor; Rab's freend, ye ken.
We often speak aboot you, doctor."    She
smiled, and made a movement, but said nothing; and prepared to come down, putting her
plaid aside and rising. Had Solomon, in all
his glory, been handing down the Queen of
Sheba at his palace gate, he could not have
done it more daintily, more tenderly, more like
a gentleman, than did James the Howgate
carrier, when he lifted down Ailie his wife.
The contrast of his small, swarthy, weatherbeaten, keen, worldly face to hers-pale, subdued, and beautiful-was something wonderful.
Rab looked on concerned and puzzled, but
ready for anything that might turn up,-were
it to strangle the nurse, the porter, or even me.
Ailie and he seemed great friends.
" As I was sayin', she's got a kind o' trouble
in her breest, doctor; wull ye tak' a look at




Rab and his Friends.


I5


it?"  We walked into the consulting-room,
all four; Rab grim and comic, willing to be
happy and confidential if cause could be
shown, willing also to be the reverse, on the
same terms. Ailie sat down, undid her open
gown and her lawn handkerchief round her
neck, and, without a word, showed me her
right breast.  I looked at and examined it
carefully,-she and James watching me, and
Rab eyeing all three.  What could I say?
there it was, that had once been so soft, so
shapely, so white, so gracious and bountiful,
so "full of all blessed conditions,"-hard as
a stone, a centre of horrid pain, making that
pale face, with its grey, lucid, reasonable eyes,
and its sweet resolved mouth, express the full
measure of suffering overcome. Why was that
gentle, modest, sweet woman, clean and loveable,
condemned by God to bear such a burden?
I got her away to bed. "May Rab and me
bide?" said James. "' ou may; and Rab, if
he will behave himself." " I'se warrant he's do
that, doctor;" and in slunk the faithful beast.
I wish you could have seen him. There are
no such dogs now. He belonged to a lost tribe.
As I have said, he was brindled, and grey like




Rab and his Friends.


Rubislaw granite; his hair short, hard, and
close, like a lion's;  's, body thick set, like a
little bull-a sort of compressed Hercules of a
dog.   He must have been rinety pounds'
weight, at the least; he had a large blunt head;
his muzzle black as night, his mouth blacker
than any night, a tooth or two-being all he
had-gleaming out of his jaws of darkness.
His head was scarred with the records of old
wounds, a sort of series of fields of battle all
over it; one eye out, one ear cropped as close
as was Archbishop Lcighton's father's; the
remaining eye had the power of two; and above
it, and in constant communication with it, was
a tattered rag of an ear, which was for ever
unfurling itself, like an old flag; and then that
bud of a tail, about one inch long, if it could in
any sense be said to be long, being as broad as
long-the mobility, the instantaneousness of
that bud were very funny and surprising, and
its expressive twinklings and winkings, the
intercommunications between the eye, the ear
and it, were of the oddest and swiftest.
Rab had the dignity and simplicity of great
size; and having fought his way all along the
road to absolute supremacy, he was as mighty




Rab and his Friends.


17


in his own line as Julius Caesar or the Duke of
Wellington, and had the gravityl of all great
fighters.
You must have often observed the likeness
of certain men to certain animals, and of certain
dogs to men. Now, I never looked at Rab
without thinking of the great Baptist preacher,
Andrew    Fuller.2     The   same    large, heavy,
menacing, combative, sombre, honest countenance, the same deep inevitable eye, the same
1 A  Highland game-keeper, when asked why a certain
terrier, of singular pluck, was so much more solemn than the
other dogs, said, "Oh, Sir, life's full o' sairiousness to himhe just never can get enuff o' fechtin'."
2 Fuller was, in early life, when a farmer lad at Soham,
famous as a boxer; not quarrelsome, but not without " the
stern delight" a man of strength and courage feels in their
exercise.  Dr. Charles Stewart, of Dunearn, whose rare
gifts and graces as a physician, a divine, a scholar, and a
gentleman, live only in the memory of those few who knew
and survive him, liked to tell how Mr. Fuller used to say,
that when he was in the pulpit, and saw a buirdly man come
along the passage, he would instinctively draw himself up,
measure his imaginary antagonist, and forecast how he would
deal with him, his hands meanwhile conA',ln, inito fists, and
tending to " square." He must have been a hard hitter if he
boxed as he preached-what "The Fancy" would call "an
ugly customer."




Rab and his Friends.


look,-as of thunder asleep, but ready,-neither
a dog nor a man to be trifled with.
Next day, my master, the surgeon, examined
Ailie. There was no doubt it must kill her,
and soon.   It could be removed-it might
never return-it would give her speedy reliefshe should have it done. She curtsied, looked
at James, and said, cc When?" cc To-morrow,"
said the kind surgeon-a man of few words.
She and James and Rab and I retired. I
noticed that he and she spoke little, but seemed
to anticipate everything in each other.  The
following day, at noon, the students came in,
hurrying up the great stair.   At the first
landing-place, on a small well-known black
board, was a bit of paper fastened by wafers,
and many remains of old wafers beside it. On
the paper were the words,-" An operation
to-day. J. B. Clerk."
Up ran the youths, eager to secure good
places: in they crowded, full of interest and
talk. " What's the case?" "cc Which side is it?"
Don't think them heartless; they are neither
better nor worse than you or I: they get over
their professional horrors, and into their proper
work; and in them pity-as an emotion, ending




Rab and his Friends.


19


in itself or at best in tears and a long-drawn
breath, lessens, while pity as a motive, is quickened, and gains power and purpose. It is well
for poor human nature that it is so.
The operating theatre is crowded; much talk
and fun, and all the cordiality and stir of youth.
The surgeon with his staff of assistants is there.
In comes Ailie: one look at her quiets and
abates the eager students. That beautiful old
woman is too much for them; they sit down,
and are dumb, and gaze at her. These rough
boys feel the power of her presence. She walks
in quickly, but without haste; dressed in her
mutch, her neckerchief, her white dimity shortgown, her black bombazeen petticoat, showing
her white worsted stockings and her carpetshoes. Behind her was James with Rab. James
sat down in the distance, and took that huge
and noble head between his knees. Rab looked
perplexed and dangerous; for ever cocking his
ear and dropping it as fast.
Ailie stepped up on a seat, and laid herself on
the table, as her friend the surgeon told her;
arranged herself, gave a rapid look at James,
shut her eyes, rested herself on me, and took
my hand. The operation was at once begun;
it was necessarily slow; and chloroform-one of




20


Rab and his Friends.


God's best gifts to his suffering children-was
then unknown. The surgeon did his work.
The pale face showed its pain, but was still and
silent. Rab's soul was working within him; he
saw that something strange was going on,blood flowing from his mistress, and she suffering; his ragged ear was up, and importunate;
he growled and gave now and then a sharp impatient yelp; he would have liked to have done
something to that man. But James had him
firm, and gave him a glower from time to time,
and an intimation of a possible kick;-all the
better for James, it kept his eye and his mind
off Ailie.
It is over: she is dressed, steps gently and
decently down from the table, looks for James;
then, turning to the surgeon and the students,
she curtsies,-and in a low, clear voice, begs
their pardon if she has behaved ill. The
students-all of us-wept like children; the surgeon happed her up carefully,-and, resting on
James and me, Ailie went to her room, Rab following. We put her to bed. James took off
his heavy shoes, crammed with tackets, heel-capt
and toe-capt, and put them carefully under the
table, saying, " Maister John, I'm for nane o'
yer strynge nurse bodies for Ailie. I'll be her




Rab and his Friends.


nurse, and I'll gang aboot on my stockin' soles
as canny as pussy."  And so he did; and
handy and clever, and swift and tender as any
woman, was that horny-handed, snell, peremptory little man. Everything she got he gave
her: he seldom slept; and often I saw his small
shrewd eyes out of the darkness, fixed on her.
As before, they spoke little.
Rab behaved well, never moving, showing us
how meek and gentle he could be, and occasionally, in his sleep, letting us know that he
was demolishing some adversary. He took a
walk with me every day, generally to the
Candlemaker Row; but he was sombre and
mild; declined doing battle, though some fit
cases offered, and indeed submitted to sundry
indignities; and was always very ready to turn,
and came faster back, and trotted up the stair
with much lightness, and went straight to that
door.
Jess, the mare, had been sent, with her
weather-worn cart, to Howgate, and had doubtless her own dim and placid meditations and
confusions, on the absence of her master and
Rab, and her unnatural freedom from the road
and her cart.




22


Rab atd his Friends.


For some days Ailie did well. The wound
healed cc by the first intention;" for as James
said, " Oor Ailie's skin 's ower clean to beil." The
students came in quiet and anxious, and surrounded her bed.   She said she liked to see
their young, honest faces. The surgeon dressed
her, and spoke to her in his own short kind
way, pitying her through his eyes, Rab and
James outside the circle,-Rab being now reconciled, and even cordial, and having made up
his mind that as yet nobody required worrying,
but, as you may suppose, semper paratus.
So far well: but, four days after the operation,
my patient had a sudden and long shivering, a
" groosin'," as she called it. I saw her soon
after; her eyes were too bright, her cheek
coloured; she was restless, and ashamed of being
so; the balance was lost; mischief had begun.
On looking at the wound, a blush of red told
the secret, her pulse was rapid, her breathing
anxious and quick, she wasn't herself, as she
said, and was vexed at her restlessness. We tried
what we could.   James did everything, was
everywhere; never in the way, never out of it;
Rab subsided under the table into a dark place,
and was motionless, all but his eye, which fol



Rab and his Friends.


23


lowed every one. Ailie got worse; began to
wander in her mind, gently; was more demonstrative in her ways to James, rapid in her
questions, and sharp at times. He was vexed,
and said, " She was never that way afore; no,
never."  For a time she knew her head was
wrong, and was always asking our pardon-the
dear, gentle old woman: then delirium set in
strong, without pause. Her brain gave way,
and then came that terrible spectacle,
"The intellectual power, through words and things,
Went sounding on its dim and perilous way;"
she sang bits of old songs and Psalms, stopping
suddenly, mingling the Psalms of David, and
the diviner words of his Son and Lord, with
homely odds and ends and scraps of ballads.
Nothing more touching, or in a sense more
strangely beautiful, did I ever witness. Her
tremulous, rapid, affectionate, eager, Scotch
voice,-the swift, aimless, bewildered mind, the
baffled utterance, the bright and perilous eye;
some wild words, some household cares, something for James, the' names of the dead, Rab
called rapidly and in a "fremyt" voice, and
he starting up, surprised, and slinking off as




24


Rab and his Friends.


if he were to blame somehow, oi had been
dreaming he heard. Many eager questions and
beseechings which James and I could make
nothing of, and on which she seemed to set her
all, and then sink back ununderstood. It was
very sad, but better than many things that are
not called sad. James hovered about, put out
and miserable, but active and exact as ever;
read to her, when there was a lull, short bits
from the Psalms, prose and metre, chanting the
latter in his own rude and serious way, showing
great knowledge of the fit words, bearing up
like a man, and doating over her as his cc air
Ailie." "Ailie, ma woman!" cc Ma ain bonnie
wee dawtie!"
The end was drawing on: the golden bowl
was breaking; the silver cord was fast being
loosed-that animula blandula, vagula, hospes,
comesque, was about to flee. The body and
the soul-companions for sixty years-were
being sundered, and taking leave. She was
walking, alone, through the valley of that
shadow, into which one day we must all enter,
and yet she was not alone, for we know
whose rod and staff were comforting her.
One night she had fallen quiet, and as we




Rab and his Friends.


25


hoped, asleep; her eyes were shut. We put
down the gas, and sat watching her. Suddenly
she sat up in bed, and taking a bedgown which
was lying on it rolled up, she held it eagerly to
her breast,-to the right side. We could see
her eyes bright with a surprising tenderness and
joy, bending over this bundle of clothes. She
held it as a woman holds her sucking child;
opening out her night-gown impatiently, and
holding it close, and brooding over it, and
murmuring foolish little words, as over one
whom his mother comforteth, and who sucks
and is satisfied.  It was pitiful and strange
to see her wasted dying look, keen and yet
vague-her immense love.
"Preserve me!" groaned James, giving way.
And then she rocked back and forward, as if to
make it sleep, hushing it, and wasting on it her
infinite fondness. "Wae's me, doctor; I declare
she's thinkin' it's that bairn." " What bairn?"
"C The only bairn we ever had; our wee
Mysie, and she's in the Kingdom, forty years
and mair."   It was plainly true: the pain
in the breast, telling its urgent story to a
bewildered, ruined brain, was misread and
mistaken; it suggested to her the uneasiness




26          Rab and his Friends.
of a breast full of milk, and then the child;
and so again once more they were together, and
she had her ain wee Mysie in her bosom.
This was the close. She sank rapidly: the
delirium left her; but, as she whispered, she
was "clean silly;" it was the lightening before
the final darkness. After having for some time
lain still-her eyes shut, she said " James!"
He came close to her, and lifting up her calm,
clear, beautiful eyes, she gave him a long look,
turned to me kindly but shortly, looked for
Rab but could not see him, then turned to her
husband again, as if she would never leave off
looking, shut her eyes, and composed herself.
She lay for some time breathing quick, and
passed away so gently, that when we thought
she was gone, James, in his old-fashioned way,
held the mirror to her face. After a long
pause, one small spot of dimness was breathed
out; it vanished away, and never returned,
leaving the blank clear darkness of the mirror
without a stain.  " What is our life? it is even
a vapour, which appeareth for a little time, and
then vanisheth away."
Rab all this time had been full awake and
motionless: he came forward beside us: Ailie's




Rab and his Friends.


27


hand, which James had held, was hanging down;
it was soaked with his tears; Rab licked it all
over carefully, looked at her, and returned to
his place under the table.
James and I sat, I don't know how long, but
for some time,-saying nothing: he started up
abruptly, and with some noise went to the
table, and putting his right fore and middle
fingers each into a shoe, pulled them out, and
put them on, breaking one of the leather
latchets, and muttering in anger, " I never did
the like o' that afore!"
I believe he never did; nor after either.
" Rab!" he said roughly, and pointing with his
thumb to the bottom of the bed. Rab leapt
up, and settled himself; his head and eye to the
dead face. " Maister John, ye'll wait for me,"
said the carrier; and disappeared in the darkness, thundering down stairs in his heavy shoes.
I ran to a front window: there he was, already
round the house, and out at the gate, fleeing
like a shadow.
I was afraid about him, and yet not afraid;
so I sat down beside Rab, and being wearied,
fell asleep.  I awoke from  a sudden noise
outside. It was November, and there had been




28


Rab and his Friends.


a heavy fall of snow. Rab was in statu quo;
he heard the noise too, and plainly knew it, but
never moved. I looked out; and there, at the
gate, in the dim morning-for the sun was not
up, was Jess and the cart,-a cloud of steam
rising from the old mare. I did not see James;
he was already at the door, and came up the
stairs, and met me. It was less than three
hours since he left, and he must have posted
out-who knows how?-to Howgate, full nine
miles off; yoked Jess, and driven her astonished into town. He had an armful of blankets, and was streaming with perspiration.  He
nodded to me, spread out on the floor two
pairs of clean old blankets having at their
corners, "c A. G., 1794," in large letters in red
worsted.  These were the initials of Alison
Grarme, and James may have looked in at
her from without - himself unseen but not
unthought of-when he was "'wat, wat, and
weary," and after having walked many a mile
over the hills, may have seen her sitting, while
Cca' the lave were sleepin';" and by the firelight
working her name on the blankets, for her ain
James's bed.
He motioned Rab down, and taking his




Rab and his Friends.


wife in his arms, laid her in the blankets, and
happed her carefully and firmly up, leaving
the face uncovered; and then lifting her, he
nodded again sharply to me, and with a
resolved but utterly miserable face, strode
along the passage, and down stairs, followed by
Rab. I followed with a light; but he didn't
need it.  I went out, holding stupidly the
candle in my hand in the calm frosty air; we
were soon at the gate. I could have helped
him, but I saw he was not to be meddled with,
and he was strong, and did not need it. He
laid her down as tenderly, as safely, as he had
lifted her out ten days before-as tenderly as
when he had her first in his arms when she
was only "A. G.,"-sorted her, leaving that
beautiful sealed face open to the heavens; and
then taking Jess by the head, he moved away.
He did not notice me, neither did Rab, who
presided behind the cart.
I stood till they passed through the long
shadow of the College, and turned up Nicolson
Street. I heard the solitary cart sound through
the streets, and die away and come again; and
I returned, thinking of that company going up
Libberton Brae, then along Roslin Muir, the




30


Rab and his Friends.


morning light touching the Pentlands and making them like on-looking ghosts; then down
the hill through Auchindinny woods, past
"haunted Woodhouselee;" and as daybreak
came sweeping up the bleak Lammermuirs, and
fell on his own door, the company would stop,
and James would take the key, and lift Ailie up
again, laying her on her own bed, and, having
put Jess up, would return with Rab and shut
the door.
James buried his wife, with his neighbours
mourning, Rab inspecting the solemnity from a
distance. It was snow, and that black ragged
hole would look strange in the midst of the
swelling spotless cushion of white.  James
looked after everything; then rather suddenly
fell ill, and took to bed; was insensible when
the doctor came, and soon died. A sort of low
fever was prevailing in the village, and his want
of sleep, his exhaustion, and his misery, made
him apt to take it. The grave was not difficult
to re-open.  A fresh fall of snow had again
made all things white and smooth; Rab once
more looked on, and slunk home to the stable.
And what of Rab? I asked for him next




Rab and his Friends.


31


week at the new carrier who got the goodwill
of James's business, and was now master of
Jess and her cart. "How's Rab?"    He put
me off, and said rather rudely, " What's your
business wi' the dowg?" I was not to be so
put off.   "Where's Rab?"     He, getting
confused and red, and intermeddling with his
hair, said " 'Deed, sir, Rab's deid."  " Dead!
what did he die of?"  "Weel, sir," said he,
getting redder, "he didna exactly dee; he was
killed. I had to brain him wi' a rack-pin;
there was nae doin' wi' him. He lay in the
treviss wi' the mear, and wadna come oot. 1
tempit him wi' kail and meat, but he wad tak
naething, and keepit me frae feedin' the beast,
and he was aye gur gurrin', and grup gruppin'
me by the legs. I was laith to make awa wi'
the auld dowg, his like wasna atween this and
Thornhill, - but, 'deed, sir, I could do naething else." I believed him. Fit end for Rab,
quick and complete. His teeth and his friends
gone, why should he keep the peace, and be
civil?




EDINBURGH:
THOMAS AND ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE,
PRINTERS TO THE QUEEN, AND TO THE UNIVERSITY.
'1.        I



PRICE     SIXPENCE.
MINCHMOOR.
BY DR. JOHN BROWN.
From the Weekly Review.
Dr. Brown is an interesting and instructive guide, and the many
traditions and associations of the country around are happily referred to, noted, and illustrated. Ever genial, he is never dry.
From the Derby Gazette.
A happy, spirited description of a walk over Minchmoor.
From the Somerset Telegraph.
Written in a style which cannot fail to attract, and is well worthy
a perusal.
From the Greenock Herald.
An agreeable little book, as all books al that cor e from the
same pen. The author here collects a whole mass of literary lore,
and strews it delightfully over his pages.
From the Cheshire Ob...r.
Minchmoor lies between the Tweed and the Yarrow, and its
neighbourhood is rich in literary associations, of which Dr. Brown
not only reminds us, but uses them as pegs to hang many a pleasant
allusion.
From the Norfolk Herald.
Dr. Brown is unique among the writers of the present day in his
power of investing any subject, however unpromising or trivial,
with freshness and interest.
EDINBURGH: EDMONSTON AND DOUGLAS.




WORKS BY DR. JOHN BROWN,
Hors) SubsecivB.        Sixth Edition.  1 Volume, Extra
Foolscap 8vo, Price 7s. 6d.
Locke and Sydenham. New Edition. Extra Foolscap 8vo, Price 7s. 6d.
Letter to the Rev. John        Cairns, D.D.      Second
Edition. Crown 8vo, Sewed, Price 2s.
Arthur H. Hallam; Extracted from ' Horse Subsecive.'
Foolscap, Sewed, Price 2s.; Cloth, Price 2s. 6d.
Rab and     his Friends; Extracted from 'Horam Subsecive.'  Forty-seventh Thousand.  Foolscap, Sewed,
Price 6d.
Marjorie Fleming: A Sketch. Fifteenth Thousand.
Foolscap, Sewed, Price 6d.
Our Dogs; Extracted from ' Horte Subsecivee.' Ninteenth
Thousand. Foolscap, Sewed, Price 6d.
Rab    and   his  Friends.     With Illustrations by Sir
GEORGE HARVEY, R.S.A., Sir J. NOEL PATON, R.S.A., and
J. B. Cheap Edition. In One Volume, Cloth, Price 3s. 6(1.
'With Brains, Sir;' Extracted from ' Hors Subsecive.'
Foolscap, Sewed, Price 6d.
Minchmoor.       Price 6d.
Jeems the Door-keeper. A Lay Sermon. Price 6d.
EDINBURGH: EDMONSTON AND DOUGLAS.




NIMARJORIE       FLEMINGA
A SKETCH.A
BEING THE PAPER ENTITLEDA
PIET MROI:A STORY OF CHILDA
~,LIFE FIFTY YEARS AGO."  A
AA
Ja M3Y JOHN BROWN, M.D.A
VAUTHOR OF "RAB AND HIS FRIENDS."
Reprinted from the North British Review.A
EDINBURGH:A
ED'MONSTON AND DOU G LA.S.  A
-    1864.......................,.........................
Thou~ikd.       PriceUhp




RAB AND HIS FRIENDS.
39th Thousand. Price 6d.
' Who is he that has not heard of if not read " Rab and his
Friends?" We suppose that there have been few stories ever
printed which, in so short a time, won for their author fame.
Certainly never was a story so short and so pathetic, so full of
joyous tears, so brimming with the actions from which spring
sacred pity. We do not envy the man, and we cannot imagine
the woman or girl who could read the story of " Rab and his
Friends " without tears actual or imminent.'-Morning Herald.
'What Landseer is upon canvas, that Dr. Brown is upon
paper.  The canine family was never before so well represented in literature.'-Chambers' Journal.
"HOER.E SUBSECIV.E."
"The collection of Essays published under this title, and from
which we have thought it enough to select the more striking
portions for the purpose of giving an interesting picture of
domestic manners, has recently obtained for Dr. Brown a place
among the most popular writers who claim Sir Walter Scott as
their countryman. These short sketches, in which the pen of
the narrator skilfully brings together the memories of two or
three generations, enable us to understand the religious instincts,
the literary tastes of Scotchmen in our own day, and that singular blending of opposite gifts, which in them are seen to balance
one another, the staid thoughtfulness of their life and manners,
and the liveliness of their humour-(La gravite des meurs et la
vivacite de l' esprit.)"
Revue des Deux Mondet,, 1st November 1862.




MARJORIE FLEMING
A  SKETCH
BEING THE PAPER ENTITLED
"PET MARJORIE: A STORY OF CHILD
LIFE FIFTY YEARS AGO"
BY JOHN BROWN M.D.
AUTHOR OF "RAB AND HIS FRIENDS."
REPRINTED FROM THE NORTH BRITISH REVIEW.
EDINBURGH:
EDMONSTON AND DOUGLAS.
1864.




NOTE.
THE separate publication of this sketch has been forced upon me
by the ' somewhat free use' made of it in a second and thereby
enlarged edition of the 'little book' to which I owe my introductio,
to Marjorie Fleming-but nothing more;-a 'use' so exceedingly
'free' as to extend almost to everything with which I had ventured
perhaps to encumber the letters and journals of that dear child.
To be called 'kind and genial' by the individual who devised this
edition, has, strange as he may think it, altogether failed to console
me. Empty praise without the solid pudding is proverbially a thing
of naught; but what shall we say of praise, the emptiness of which
is aggravated, not merely by the absence, but by the actual abstractionr
of the pudding?
This little act of conveyancing -this 'engaging compilation' as' he
-would have called it-puts me in mind of that pleasant joke in the
preface to 'Essays by Mr. Goldsmith:'- 'I would desire in this case,
to imitate that fat man whom I have somewhere heard of in a shipwreck, who, when the sailors prest by famine, were taking slices from
his body, to satisfy their hunger, insisted with great justice on having
the first cut for himself.'
I have to thank the proprietors of the North British Review for permitting this reprint.




To
MISS FLEMING
to whom Iam indebtedfor all its materials
THIS MEMORIAL
of her dear and unforgotten
MA IDIE
is gratefully inscribed.








MARJORIE FLEMING.
ONE November afternoon in i8io-the year in which
Waverley was resumed and laid aside again, to be
finished off, its last two volumes in three weeks, and made
immortal in i8 4, and when its author, by the death of
Lord Melville, narrowly escaped getting a civil appointment
in India-three men, evidently lawyers, might have been
seen escaping like schoolboys from the Parliament House,
and speeding arm-in-arm down Bank Street and the Mound,
in the teeth of a surly blast of sleet.
The three friends sought the bdd of the low wall old
Edinburgh boys remember well, and sometimes miss now,
as they struggle with the stout west wind.
The three were curiously unlike each other. One, 'a
little man of feeble make, who would be unhappy if his
pony got beyond a foot pace,' slight, with 'small, elegant
features, hectic cheek, and soft hazel eyes, the index of the
quick, sensitive spirit within, as if he had the warm heart of
a woman, her genuine enthusiasm, and some of her weaknesses.' Another, as unlike a woman as a man can be;
homely, almost common, in look and figure; his hat and
his coat, and indeed his entire covering, worn to the quick,
but all of the best material; what redeemed him from
vulgarity and meanness, were his eyes, deep set, heavily
thatched, keen, hungry, shrewd, with a slumbering glow far
in, as if they could be dangerous; a man to care nothing




6               Marjorie Fleming.
for at first glance, but somehow, to give a second and notforgetting look at. The third was the biggest of the three,
and though lame, nimble, and all rough and alive with
power; had you met him anywhere else, you would say he
was*a Liddesdale store-farmer, come of gentle blood; 'a
stout, blunt carle,' as he says of.himself, with the swing and
stride and the eye of a man of the hills-a large, sunny,
out-of-door air all about him. On his broad and somewhat stooping shoulders, was set that head which, with
Shakspere's and Bonaparte's, is the best known in all the
world.
He was in high spirits, keeping his companions and himself in roars of laughter, and every now and then seizing
them, and stopping, that they might take their fill of the
fun; there they stood shaking with laughter, 'not an inch
of their body free' from its grip. At George Street they
parted, one to Rose Court, behind St. Andrew's Church,
one to Albany Street, the other, our big and limping friend,
to Castle Street.
We need hardly give their names. The first was William
Erskine, afterwards Lord Kinnedder, chased out of the
world by a calumny, killed by its foul breath,'And at the touch of wrong, without a strife,
Slipped in a moment out of life.'
There is nothing in literature more beautiful or more
pathetic than Scott's love and sorrow for this friend of his
youth.
The second was William Clerk,-the Darsie Latimer of
Rcdgauntlet; 'a man,' as Scott says, 'of the most acute
intellects and powerful apprehension,' but of more powerful
indolence, so as to leave the world with little more than the
report of what he might have been,-a humorist as genuine,
though not- quite so savagely Swiftian as his brother Lord




Marjorie Fleming.


7


Eldin, neither of whom had much of that commonest and
best of all the humours, called good.
The third we all know. What has he not done for every
one of us   Who else ever, except Shakspere, so diverted
mankind, entertained and entertains a world so liberally, so
wholesomely? We are fain to say, not even Shakspere, for
his is something deeper than diversion, something higher
than pleasure, and yet who would care to split this hair?
Had any one watched him closely before and after the
parting, what a change he would see! The bright, broad
laugh, the shrewd, jovial word, the man of the Parliament
House and of the world; and, next step, moody, the light of
his eye withdrawn, as if seeing things that were invisible;
his shut mouth, like a child's, so impressionable, so innocent, so sad; he was now, all within, as before he was all
without; hence his brooding lopk., As the snow blattered
in his face, he muttered, ' How it raves and drifts! On-ding
o' snaw-ay, that's the word-on-ding-'.   He was now at
his own door, ' Castle Street, No. 39.'  He opened the
door, and went straight to his- den; that wondrous workshop, where, in one year, I823, when he was fifty-two, he
wrote Peteril of the Peak, Quentin Durward, and St. Ronan's
WellJ, besides much else. We once took the foremost of
our novelists, the greatest, we would say, since Scott, into
this room, and cpuld not but mark the solemnizing effect of
sitting where the great magician sat so often and so long,
and looking out upon that little, shabby bit of sky and that
back green, where faithful Camp lies.'
1 This favourite dog ' died about January 1809, and was buried in a
fine moonlight night in the little garden behind the house in Castle
Street. My wife tells me she remembers the whole family in tears
about the grave as her father himself smoothed the turf above Camp,
with the saddest face she had ever seen. He had been engaged to dine
abroad that day, but apologized, on account of the death of "a dear old
fiiend." '-Lockhart's Life of Scott




8               Marjorie Fleming.
He sat down in his large, green morocco elbow-chair,
drew himself close to his table, and glowered and gloomed
at his writing apparatus, 'a very handsome old box, richly
carved, lined with crimson velvet, and containing ink-bottles,
taper-stand, etc., in silver, the whole in such order, that it might
have come from the silversmith's window half an hour before.'
He took out his paper, then starting up angrily, said, '" Go
spin, you jade, go spin." No, d- it, it won't do,"My spinnin' wheel is auld and stiff,
The rock o't wunna stand, sir,
To keep the temper-pin in tiff
Employs ower aft my hand, sir."
I am off the fang.1 I can make nothing of Waverley to-day;
I'll awa' to Marjorie. Come wi' me, Maida, you thief.' The
great creature rose slowly, and the pair were off, Scott
taking a maud (a plaid) with him. 'White as a frosted
plum-cake, by jingo!' said he, when he got to the street.
Maida gambolled and whisked among the snow, and his
master strode across to Young Street, and through it to
I, North Charlotte Street, to the house of his dear friend,
Mrs. William Keith of Corstorphine Hill, niece of Mrs.
Keith of Ravelston, of whom he said at her death, eight
years after, 'Much tradition, and that of the best, has died
with this excellent old lady, one of the few persons whose
spirits and cleanliness and freshness of mind and body made
old age lovely and desirable.'
Sir Walter was in that house almost every day, and had
a key, so in he and the hound went, shaking themselves
in the lobby. 'Marjorie! Marjorie!' shouted her friend,
'where are ye, my bonnie wee croodlin doo '      In a
moment a bright, eager child of seven was in his arms, and
he was kissing her all over. Out came Mrs. Keith. 'Come
1    Applied to a pump when it is dry, and its valve has lost its 'fang;'
from the German, fangen, to hold.




Marjorie Fleming.                 9
yer ways in, Wattie.' 'No, not now. I am going to take
Marjorie wi' me, and you may come to your tea in Duncan
Roy's sedan, and bring the bairn home in your lap.' ' Tak'
Marjorie, and it on-ding o' snaZw /' said Mrs. Keith. He
said to himself, 'On-ding-that's odd-that is the very
word.'  'Hoot, awa! look here,' and he displayed the
corner of his plaid, made to hold lambs-(the true shepherd's plaid, consisting of two breadths sewed together, and
uncut at one end, making a poke or cul de sac). 'Tak' yer
lamb,' said she, laughing at the contrivance, and so the Pet
was first well happit up, and then put, laughing silently, into
the plaid neuk, and the shepherd strode off with his lamb,Maida gambolling through the snow, and running races in
her mirth.
Didn't he face 'the angry airt,' and make her bield his
bosom, and into his own room with her, and lock the door,
and out with the warm, rosy, little wifie, who took it all with
great composure! There the two remained for three or more
hours, making the house ring with their laughter; you can
fancy the big man's and Maidie's laugh. Having made the
fire cheery, he set her down in his ample chair, and standing sheepishly before her, began to say his lesson, which
happened to be-' Ziccotty, diccotty, dock, the mouse ran
up the clock, the clock struck wan, down the mouse ran,
ziccotty, diccotty, dock.' This done repeatedly till she was
pleased, she gave him his new lesson, gravely and slowly,
timing it upon her small fingers,-he saying it after her,'Wonery, twoery, tickery, seven;
Alibi, crackaby, ten, and eleven;
Pin, pan, musky, dan;
Tweedle-um, twoddle-um,
Twenty-wan; eerie, one, ourie,
You, are, out.'
He pretended to great difficulty, and she rebuked him
A 2




10               Maarjorie Fleming.
with most comical gravity, treating him as a child. He used
to say that when he came to Alibi Crackaby he broke
down, and Pin-Pan, Musky-Dan, Tweedle-um Twoddle-um
made him roar with laughter. He said Musky-Dan especially was beyond endurance, bringing up an Irishman and
his hat fresh from the Spice Islands and odoriferous Ind;
she getting quite bitter in her displeasure at his ill behaviour
and stupidness.
Then he would read ballads to her in his own glorious
way, the two getting wild with excitement over Gil AfMorrice
or the Baron of Smailholm,; and he would take her on his
knee, and make her repeat Constance's speeches in King
John, till he swayed to and fro, sobbing his fill. Fancy the
gifted little creature, like one possessed, repeating' For I am sick, and capable of fears,
Oppressed with wrong, and therefore, full of fears;
A widow, husbandless, subject to fears;
A woman, naturally born to fears.'
'If thou that bidst me be content, wert grim,
Ugly and slanderous to thy mother's womb,
Lame, foolish, crooked, swart, prodigious-'.
Or, drawing herself up 'to the height of her great argument''I will instruct my sorrows to be proud,
For grief is proud, and makes his owner stout.
Here I and sorrow sit.'
Scott used to say that he was amazed at her power over
him, saying to Mrs. Keith, 'She's the most extraordinary
creature I ever met with, and her repeating of Shakspere
overpowers me as nothing else does.'
Thanks to the unforgetting sister of this dear child,
who has much of the sensibility and fun of her who has
been in her small grave these fifty and more years, we
have now before us the letters and journals of Pet Marjorie




Marjorie Fleming.                       i I
-before us lies and gleams her rich brown hair, bright and
sunny as if yesterday's, with the words on the paper, ' Cut
out in her last illness,' and two pictures of her by her beloved
Isabella, whom she worshipped; there are the faded old scraps
of paper, hoarded still, over which her warm breath and her
warm little heart had poured themselves; there is the old
water-mark, 'Lingard, i8o8.' The two portraits are very
like each other, but plainly done at different times; it is a
chubby, healthy face, deep-set, brooding eyes, as eager to
tell what is going on within, as to gather in all the glories
from without; quick with the wonder and the pride of life;
they are eyes that would not be soon satisfied with seeing;
eyes that would devour their object, and yet childlike and
fearless; and that is a mouth that will not be soon satisfied
with love; it has a curious likeness to Scott's own, which
has always appeared to us his sweetest, most mobile and
speaking feature.
There she is, looking straight at us as she did at himfearless and full of love, passionate, wild, wilful, fancy's child.
One cannot look at it without thinking of Wordsworth's lines
on poor Hartley Coleridge:
'0 blessed vision, happy child!
Thou art so exquisitely wild,
I thought of thee with many fears,
Of what might be thy lot in future years.
I thought of times when Pain might be thy guest,
Lord of thy house and hospitality;
And Grief, uneasy lover I ne'er at rest,
But when she sat within the touch of thee.
Oh, too industrious folly I
Oh, vain and causeless melancholy!
Nature will either end thee quite,
Or, lengthening out thy season of delight,
Preserve for thee by individual right,
A young lamb's heart among the full-grown flock.'
And we can imagine Scott, when holding his warm plump




:12               Marjorie Fleming.
little playfellow in his arms, repeating that stately friend's
lines:Loving she is, and tractable, though wild,
And Innocence hath privilege in her,
To dignify arch looks and laughing eyes,
And feats of cunning; and the pretty round
Of trespasses, affected to provoke
Mock chastisement and partnership in play.
And, as a fagot sparkles on the hearth,
Not less if unattended and alone,
Than when both young and old sit gathered round,
And'take delight in its activity,
Iven so this happy creature of herself
Is all-sufficient; solitude to her
Is blithe society; she fills the air
With gladness and involuntary songs.'
But we will let her disclose herself. We need hardly say
that all this is true, and that these letters are as really Marjorie's as was this light brown hair; indeed you could as
easily fabricate the one as the other.
There was an old servant-Jeanie Robertson-who was
forty years in her grandfather's family. Marjorie Fleming,
or, as she is called in the letters, and by Sir Walter, Maidie,
was the last child she kept. Jeanie's wages never exceeded
~3 a year, and, when she left service, she had saved ~40.
She was devotedly attached to Maidie, rather despising and
ill-using her sister Isabella-a beautiful and gentle child.
This partiality made Maidie apt at times to domineer over
Isabella.  'I mention this' (writes her surviving sister)
'for the purpose of telling you an instance of Maidie's
generous justice. When only five years old-when walking
in Raith grounds, the two children had run on before, and
old Jeanie remembered they might come too near a dangerous mill-lade.  She called to them  to turn back.   Maidie
heeded her not, rushed all the faster on, and fell, and would
have been lost, had her sister not pulled her back, saving her
ife, but tearing her clothes.  Jeanie flew on Isabella to




lMarjorie Fleming.                3
"give it her" for spoiling her favourite's dress; Maidie rushed
in between crying out, " pay (whip) Maidjie as much as you
like, and I'll not say one word; but touch Isy, and I'll roar
like a bull!" Years after Maidie was resting in her grave,
my mother used to take me to the place, and told the story
always in the exact same words.' This Jeanie must have
been a character.  She took great pride in exhibiting
Maidie's brother William's Calvinistic acquirements when
nineteen months old, to the officers of a militia regiment
then quartered in Kirkcaldy. This performance was so
amusing that it was often repeated, and the little theologian
was presented by them with a cap and feathers. Jeanie's
glory was 'putting him through the carritch' (catechism)
in broad Scotch, beginning at the beginning with 'Wha
made ye, ma bonnie man ' For the correctness of this and
the three next replies Jeanie had no anxiety, but the tone
changed to menace, and the closed nieve (fist) was shaken in
the child's face as she demanded, 'Of what are you made r
DIRT' was the answer uniformly given. 'Wull ye never
learn to say dust, ye thrawn deevil ' with a cuff from the
opened hand, was the as inevitable rejoinder.
Here is Maidie's first letter before she was six. The spelling unaltered, and there are no 'commoes.'
' MY DEAR ISA,-I now sit down to answer all your kind
and beloved letters which you was so good as to write to
me. This is the first time I ever wrote a letter in my Life.
There are a great many Girls in the Square and they cry just
like a pig when we are under the painfull necessity qf putting
it to Death. - Miss Potune a Lady of my acquaintance
praises me dreadfully. I repeated something out of DeaA
Swift, and she said I was fit for the stage, and you may
think I was primmed up with majestick Pride, but upon my
word t  felt' nmyselfe turn. a little biray —birsay is a word




14             Marjorie Fleming.
which is a word that William composed which is as you may
suppose a little enraged. This horrid fat simpliton says
that my Aunt is beautifull which is intirely impossible for
that is not her nature.'
What a peppery little pen we wield! What could that
have been out of the Sardonic Dean? what other child of
that age would have used 'beloved' as she does.  This
power of affection, this faculty of beloving, and wild hunger
to be beloved, comes out more and more. She perilled her
all upon it, and it may have been as well-we know, indeed,
that it was far better-for her that this wealth of love
was so soon withdrawn to its one only infinite Giver and
Receiver. This must have been the law of her earthly life.
Love was, indeed 'her Lord and King;' and it was perhaps
well for her that she found so soon that her and our only
Lord and King, Himself is Love.
Here are bits from her Diary at Braehead:-' The day of
my existence here has been delightful and enchanting. On
Saturday I expected no less than three well made Bucks
the names of whom is here advertised. Mr. Geo. Crakey
(Craigie), and Wm. Keith and Jn. Keith-the first is the
funniest of every one of them. Mr. Crakey and walked to
Crakyhall (Craigiehall) hand in hand in Innocence and
matitation (meditation) sweet thinking on the kind love
which flows in our tender hearted mind which is overflowing with majestic pleasure no one was ever so polite to me
in the hole state of my existence. Mr. Craky you must
know is a great Buck and pretty good-looking.
'I am at Ravelston enjoying nature's fresh air. The
birds are singing sweetly-the calf doth frisk and nature
shows her glorious face.'
Here is a confession:-' I confess I have been very more
like a little young divil than a creature for when Isabella




Marjorie Fleming.


15


went up stairs to teach me religion and my multiplication
and to be good and all my other lessons I stamped with my
foot and threw my new hat which she had made on the
ground and was sulky and was dreadfully passionate, but
she never whiped me but said Marjory go into another
room and think what a great crime you are committing
letting your temper git the better of you. But I went so
sulkily that the Devil got the better of me but she never
never never whips me so that I think I would be the better
of it and the next time that I behave ill I think she should
do it for she never never does it..... Isabella has given me
praise for checking my temper for I was sulky even when
she was kneeling an hole hour teaching me to write.'
Our poor little wifie, she has no doubts of the personality
of the Devil! 'Yesterday I behave extremely ill in God's
most holy church for I would never attend myself nor let
Isabella attend which was a great crime for she often, often
tells me that when to or three are geathered together God
is in the midst of them, and it was the very same Divil that
tempted Job that tempted me I am sure; but he resisted
Satan though he had boils and many many other misfortunes
which I have escaped..... I am now going to tell you the
horible and wretched plaege (plague) that my multiplication
gives me you can't conceive it the most Devilish thing is 8
times 8 and 7 times 7 it is what nature itself cant endure.'
This is delicious; and what harm is there in her
' Devilish?' it is strong language merely; even old Rowland Hill used to say 'he grudged the Devil those rough
and ready words.' ' I walked to that delightful place Crakyhall with a delightful young man beloved by all his friends
espacially by me his loveress, but I must not talk any more
about him for Isa said it is not proper for to speak of gentalmen but I will never forget him!... I am very very glad




i6             Marjorie Fleming.
that satan has not given me boils and many other misfortunes-In the holy bible these words are written that the
Devil goes like a roaring lyon in search of his pray but the
lord lets us escape from him but we' (pauvre petite /) I do
not strive with this awfull Spirit.... To-day I pronunced
a word'which should never come out of a lady's lips it was
that I called John a Impudent Bitch. I will tell you what
I think made me in so bad a humor is I got one or two of
that bad bad sina (senna) tea to-day,'-a better excuse for
bad humour and bad language than most.
She has been reading the Book of Esther: 'It was a
dreadful thing that Haman was hanged on the very gallows
which he had prepared for Mordeca to hang him and his
ten sons thereon and it was very wrong and cruel to hang
his sons for they did not commit the crime; but then Jesus
was not then come to teach us to be merciful.' This is wise and
beautiful-has upon it the very dew Qf youth and of holiness. Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings He perfects.His praise.
'This is Saturday and I am very glad of it because I have
play half the Day and I get money too but alas I.owe Isabella 4 pence for I am finned 2 pence whenever I bite my
nails. Isabella is teaching me to make simme colings nots
of interrigations peorids commoes, etc.... As this is
4unday I will meditate upon Senciable and Religious subjects. First I should be very thankful I am not a begger.'
This amount of meditation and thankfulness seems to
have been all she was able for.
- I am going to-morrow to a delightfull place, Braehead
by name, belonging to Mrs. Crraford, where there is ducks
cocks hens bubblyjocks 2 dogs 2 cats and swine whichis
delightfuL  I think it is shocking to think that the dog and,
eat should bear them  (this is a meditation physiological),




Marjorie Fleming.               17
'and they are drowned after all. I would rather have a
man-dog than a woman-dog, because they do not bear like
women-dogs; it is a hard case-it is shocking. I cam here
to enjoy natures delightful breath it is sweeter than a fial
(phial) of rose oil.'
Braehead is the farm the historical Jock Howison asked
and got from our gay James the Fifth,' the gudeman o'
Ballengiech,' as a reward for the services of his flail when
the King had the worst of it at Cramond Brig with the
gipsies. The farm is unchanged in size from that time, and
still in the unbroken line of the ready and victorious thrasher.
Braehead is held on the condition of the possessor being
ready to present the King with a ewer and basin to wash his
hands, Jock having done this for his unknown king after the
splore, and when George the Fourth came to Edinburgh this
ceremony was performed in silver at Holyrood. It is a
lovely neuk this Braehead, preserved almost as it was 200
years ago. 'Lot and his wife' mentioned by Maidie-two
quaintly cropped yew-trees-still thrive, the burn runs as it
did in her time, and sings the same quiet tune-as much the
same and as different as Now and Then. The house full of
old family relics and pictures, the sun shining on them
through the small deep windows with their plate glass; and.there, blinking at the sun, and chattering contentedly, is a
parrot, that might, for its looks of eld, have been in the ark,
and domineered over and deaved the dove.  Everything
about the place is old and fresh.
This is beautiful:-' I am very sorry to say that I forgot
God-that is to say I forgot to pray to-day and Isabella told
me that I should be thankful that God did not forget me-if
he did, O what become of me if I was in danger and God
not friends with me-I must go to unquenchable fire atd if
I was tempted to sin-how could I resist it O no Iwill




18             Marjorie Fleming.
never do it again-no no-if I can help it.' (Canny wee
wifie!) 'My religion is greatly falling off because I dont
pray with so much attention when I am saying my prayers,
and my charecter is lost among the Braehead people. I
hope I will be religious again-but as for regaining my
charecter I despare for it.' (Poor little ' habit and repute!')
Her temper, her passion, and her 'badness' are almost
daily confessed and deplored:-' I will never again trust to
my own power, for I see that I cannot be good without God's
assistance-I will not trust in my own selfe, and Isa's health
will be quite ruined by me-it will indeed.' ' Isa has giving
me advice, which is, that when I feal Satan beginning to
tempt me, that I flea him and he would flea me.' 'Remorse
is the worst thing to bear, and I am afraid that I will fall a
marter to it.'
Poor dear little sinner!-Here comes the world again:'In my travels I met with a handsome lad named Charles
Balfour Esq., and from him I got ofers of marage-offers
of marage, did I say?  Nay plenty heard me.'  A fine
scent for 'breach of promise!'
This is abrupt and strong:-' The Divil is curced and all
works. 'Tis a fine work Newton on the profecies. I wonder
if there is another book of poems comes near the Bible.
The Divil always girns at the sight of the Bible.' ' Miss
Potune' (her 'simpliton' friend) 'is very fat; she pretends
to be very learned.   She says she saw  a stone that
dropt from the skies; but she is a good Christian.' Here
come her views on church government:-' An Annibabtist
is a thing I am not a member of-I am a Pisplekan
(Episcopalian) just now, and' (Oh you little Laodicean
and Latitudinarian!) 'a Prisbeteran at Kirkcaldy!'-(Blandula / Vagula / caelum et animum mutas qua trans mare (i.e.,
trans Bodotiam)-curris /) —' my native town.' 'Sentiment is




Marjorie Fleming.


19


not what I- am acquainted with as yet, though I wish it, and
should like to practise it' (!) 'I wish I had a great, great
deal of gratitude in my heart, in all my body.' 'There is a
new novel published, named Sef-Control (Mrs. Brunton's)' a very good maxim forsooth!' This is shocking: 'Yesterday a marrade man, named Mr. John Balfour, Esq., offered
to kiss me, and offered to marry me, though the man' (a fine
directness this!) 'was espused, and his wife was present
and said he must ask her permission; but he did not. I
think he was ashamed and confounded before 3 gentelman
-Mr. Jobson and 2 Mr. Kings.' ' Mr. Banester's' (Bannister's) ' Budjet is to-night; I hope it will be a good one. A
great many authors have expressed themselves too sentimentally.' You are right, Marjorie. 'A Mr. Bums writes
a beautiful song on Mr. Cunhaming, whose wife desarted
him-truly it is a most beautiful one.' 'I like to read the
Fabulous historys, about the histerys of Robin, Dickey,
flapsay, and Peccay, and it is very amusing, for some were
good birds and others bad, but Peccay was the most dutiful
and obedient to her parients.' 'Thomson is a beautiful
author, and Pope, but nothing to Shakespear, of which I
have a little knolege. Macbeth is a pretty composition, but
awful one.' 'The Newgate Calender is very instructive' (!)
'A sailor called here to say farewell; it must be dreadful to
leave his native country when he might get a wife; or perhaps me, for I love him very much. But 0 I forgot, Isabella forbid me to speak about love.' This antiphlogistic
regimen and lesson is ill to learn by our Maidie, for here
she sins again:-' Love is a very papithatick thing' (it is
almost a pity to correct this into pathetic), 'as well as
troublesome and tiresome-but 0 Isabella forbid me to
speak of it.' Here are her reflections on a pine-apple:-' I
think the price of a pine-apple is very dear: it is a whole




20                 Marjorie Fleming.
bright goulden guinea, that might have sustained a poor
family.' Here is a new vernal simile:-' The hedges are
sprouting like chicks from the eggs when they are newly
hatched or, as the vulgar say, clacked.'    ' Doctor Swift's
works are very funny; I got some of them          by heart.'
' Moreheads sermons are I hear much praised, but I never
read sermons of any kind; but I read novelettes and my
Bible, and I never forget it, or my prayers.' Bravo Marjorie!
She seems now, when still about six, to have broken out
into song:' EPHIBOL (EPIGRAM OR EPITAPH-WHO KNOWS WHICHI?)
ON MY DEAR LOVE ISABELLA.
Here lies sweet Isabell in bed,
With a night-cap on her head;
Her skin is soft, her face is fair,
And she has very pretty hair;
She and I in bed lies nice,
And undisturbed by rats or mice;
She is disgusted with Mr. Worgan,
Though he plays upon the organ.
Her nails are neat, her teeth are white,
Her eyes are very, very bright;
In a conspicuous town she lives,
And to the poor her money gives:
Here ends sweet Isabella's story,
And may it be much to her glory.'
Here are some bits at random:' Of summer I am very fond,
And love to bathe into a pond;
The look of sunshine dies away,
And will not let me out to play;
I love the morning's sun to spy
Glittering through the casement's eye,
The rays of light are very sweet,
And puts away the taste of meat;
"              The balmy breeze comes down from heaven,  '
e _.. -    And makes us like. for to be living.'
'-The casawary is an curious bird, and so is -the    igantic




Marjorie Fleming.


21


crane, and the pelican of the wilderness, whose mouth holds
a bucket of fish and water. Fighting is what ladies is not
qualyfied for, they would not make a good figure in battle
or in a duel. Alas! we females are of little use to our
country. The history of all the malcontents as ever was
hanged is amusing.' Still harping on the Newgate Calendar!
' Braehead is extremely pleasant to me by the companie
of swine, geese, cocks, etc., and they are the delight of my
soul.'
'I am going to tell you of a melancholy story. A young
turkie of 2 or 3 months old, would you believe it, the father
broke its leg, and he killed another! I think he ought to
be transported or hanged.'
'Queen Street is a very gay one, and so is Princes Street,
for all the lads and lasses, besides bucks and beggars, parade
there.'
'I should like to see a play very much, for I never saw
one in all my life, and don't believe I ever shall; but
I hope I can be content without going to one. I can be
quite happy without my desire being granted.'
'Some days ago Isabella had a terrible fit of the toothake, and she walked with a long night-shift at dead of night
like a ghost, and I thought she was one. She prayed for
nature's sweet restorer-balmy sleep-but did not get it-a
ghostly figure indeed she was, enough to make a saint
tremble. It made me quiver and shake from top to toe.
Superstition is a very mean thing, and should be despised
and shunned.'
Here is her weakness and her strength again:-' In the
love-novels all the heroines are very desperate. Isabella
will not allow me to speak about lovers and heroins, and 'tis
too refined for my taste.' ' Miss Egward's (Edgeworth's)
tails are very goody particularly some that are very much




22                Marjorie Fleming.
adapted for youth (!) as Laz Laurance and Tarelton, False
Keys, etc. etc.'
'Tom Jones and Grey's Elegey in a country churchyard
are both excellent, and much spoke of by both sex, particularly by the men.' Are our Marjories now-a-days better or
worse because they cannot read Tom Jones unharmed
More better than worse; but who among them can repeat
Gray's Lines on a distant prospect of Eton College as could
our Maidie?
Here is some more of her prattle:-' I went into Isabella's bed to make her smile like the Genius Demedicus'
(the Venus de Medicis) 'or the statute in an ancient Greece,
but she fell asleep in my very face, at which my anger broke
forth, so that I awoke her from a comfortable nap. All was
now hushed up again, but again my anger burst forth at her
biding me get up.'
She begins thus loftily:'Death the righteous love to see,
But from it doth the wicked flee.'
Then suddenly breaks off (as if with laughter)I am sure they fly as fast as their legs can carry them!'
' There is a thing I love to see.
That is our monkey catch a flee.'
' I love in Isa's bed to lie,
Oh, such a joy and luxury!
The bottom of the bed I sleep,
And with great care within I creep;
Oft I embrace her feet of lillys,
But she has goton all the pillys.
Her neck I never can embrace,
But I do hug her feet in place.'
How childish and yet how strong and free is her use of
words!-' I lay at the foot of the bed because Isabella said
I disturbed her by continial fighting and kicking, but I was
very dull, and continially at work reading the Arabian Nights,




Marjorie Fleming.


23


which I could not have done if I had slept at the top. I am
reading the Mysteries of Udolpho. I am much interested
in the fate of poor, poor Emily.'
Here is one of her swains'Very soft and white his cheeks,
His hair is red, and grey his breeks;
His tooth is like the daisy fair,
His only fault is in his hair.'
This is a higher flight:DEDICATED TO MRS. H. CRAWFORD BY THE AUTHOR, M. F.
Three turkeys fair their last have breathed,
And now this world for ever leaved;
Their father, and their mother too,
They sigh and weep as well as you;
Indeed, the rats their bones have crunched,
Into eternity theire laanched.
A direful death indeed they had,
As wad put any parent mad;
But she was more than usual calm,
She did not give a single dam.'
This last word is saved from   all sin by its tender age,
not to speak of the want of the n. We fear 'she' is the
abandoned mother, in spite of her previous sighs and tears.
'Isabella says when we pray we should pray fervently,
and not rattel over a prayer-for that we are kneeling at the
footstool of our Lord and Creator, who saves us from eternal damnation, and from unquestionable fire and brimston.'
She has a long poem on Mary Queen of Scots:
'Queen Mary was much loved by all,
Both by the great and by the small,
But hark! her soul to heaven doth rise!
And I suppose she has gained a prizeFor I do think she would not go
Into the.awful place below;
There is a thing that I must tell,
Elizabeth went to fire and hell;
He who would teach her to be civil,
It must be her great friend the divil 1'.




24


Marjorie Fleming.


She hits off Darnley well:'A noble's son, a handsome lad,
By some queer way or other, had
Got quite the better of her heart,
With him she always talked apart;
Silly he was, but very fair,
A greater buck was not found there.'
'By some queer way or other;' is not this the general case
and the mystery, young ladies and gentlemen         Goethe's
doctrine of 'elective affinities' discovered by our Pet Maidie.
SONNET TO A MONKEY.
'  lively, O most charming pug
Thy graceful air, and heavenly mug;
The beauties of his mind do shine,
And every bit is shaped and fine.
Your teeth are whiter than the snow,
Your a great buck, your a great beau;
Your eyes are of so nice a shape,
More like a Christian's than an ape;
Your cheek is like, the rose's blume,
Your hair is like the raven's plume;
His nose's cast is of the Roman,
He is a very pretty woman.
I could not get a rhyme for Roman,
So was obliged to call him woman.'
This last joke is good.    She repeats it when writing of
James the Second being killed at Roxburgh:'He was killed by a cannon splinter,
Quite in the middle of the winter;
Perhaps it was not at that time,
But I can get no other rhyme 1'
Here is one of her last letters, dated Kirkcaldy, I2th
October 18Ix.    You can see how her nature is deepening
and enriching:-' MY DEAR MOTHER,-YOU will think that
I entirely forget you but I assure you that you are greatly
mistaken. I think of you always and often sigh to think of
the distance between us two loving creatures of nature.
We have regular hours for all our occupations first at 7




Marjorie Fleming.                 25
o'clock we go to the dancing and come home at 8 we then
read our Bible and get our repeating and then play till ten
then we get our music till t i when we get our writing and
accounts we sew from I 2 till i after which I get my gramer
and then work till five. At 7 we come and knit till 8 when
we dont go to the dancing. This is an exact description.
I must take a hasty farewell to her whom I love, reverence
and doat on and who I hope thinks the same of
'MARJORY FLEMING.
'P.S.-An old pack of cards (!) would be very exeptible.'
This other is a month earlier:-' MY DEAR LITTLE MAMA,
-I was truly happy to hear that you were all well. We are
surrounded with measles at present on every side, for the
Herons got it, and Isabella Heron was near Death's Door,
and one night her father lifted her out of bed, and she fell
down as they thought lifeless. Mr. Heron said, "That
lassie's deed noo"-" I'm no deed yet." She then threw
up a big worm nine inches and a half long. I have
begun dancing, but am not very fond of it, for the boys
strikes and mocks me.-I have been another night at the
dancing; I like it better. I will write to you as often as I
can; but I am afraid not every week. I long for you with
the longings of a child to embrace you-to fold you in my arms.
I respect you with all the respect due to a mother. You dont
know how I love you. So / shall remain, your loving childM. FLEMING.'
What rich involution of love in the words marked! Here
are some lines to her beloved Isabella, in July i8i:' There is a thing that I do want,
With you these beauteous walks to haunt,
We would be happy if you would
Try to come over if you could.




.26                Marjorie Fleming.
Then I would all quite happy be
Now and for all eternity.
My mother is so very sweet,
And checks my appetite to eat;
My father shows us what to do;
But 0 I'm sure that I want you.
I have no more of poetry;
0 Isa do remember me,
And try to love your Marjory.'
In a letter from 'Isa' to
' Miss Muff Maidie Marjory Fleming,
favored by Rare Rear-Admiral Fleming,'
She says-' I long much to see you, and talk over all our
old stories together, and to hear you read and repeat. I am
pining for my old friend Cesario, and poor Lear, and wicked
Richard. How is the dear Multiplication table going on?
are you still as much attached to 9 times 9 as you used
to be '
But this dainty, bright thing is about to flee-to come
4quick to confusion.' The measles she writes of seized her,
and she died on the g9th of December I8II. The day
before her death, Sunday, she sat up in bed, worn and thin,
her eye gleaming as with the light of a coming world, and
with a tremulous, old voice repeated the following lines by
Bums-heavy with the shadow of death, and lit with the
phantasy of the judgment-seat-the publican's prayer in
paraphrase:
'Why am I loth to leave this earthly scene?
Have I so found it full of pleasing charms?
Some drops of joy, with draughts of ill between,
Some gleams of sunshine mid renewing storms.
Is it departing pangs my soul alarms?
Or death's unlovely, dreary, dark abode?
For guilt, for GUILT my terrors are in arms;
I tremble to approach an angry God,
And justly smart beneath his sin-avenging rod.
Fain would I say, forgive my foul offence,
Fain promise never more to disobey;




Marjorie Fleming.                     27
But should my Author health again dispense,
Again I might forsake fair virtue's way,
Again in folly's path might go astray,
Again exalt the brute and sink the man.
Then how should I for heavenly mercy pray,
Who act so counter heavenly mercy's plan,
Who sin so oft have mourned, yet to temptation ran?
O thou great Governor of all below,
If I might dare a lifted eye to thee,
Thy nod can make the tempest cease to blow,
And still the tumult of the raging sea;
With that controlling power assist even me
Those headstrong furious passions to confine,
For all unfit I feel my powers to be
To rule their torrent in the allowed line;
0 aid me with thy help, OMNIPOTENCE DIVINE.'
It is more affecting than we care to say to read her
Mother's and Isabella Keith's letters written immediately
after her death. Old and withered, tattered and pale they
are now: but when you read them, how quick, how throbbing with life and love! how rich in that language of affection which only women, and Shakspere, and Luther can
use-that power of detaining the soul over the beloved
object and its loss.
K. Philip to ConstanceYou are as fond of grief as of your child.
Const.-Grief fills the room up of my absent child,
Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me;
Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,
Remembers me of all his gracious parts,
Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form.
Then I have reason to be fond of grief.'
What variations cannot love play on this one string!
In her first letter to Miss Keith, Mrs. Fleming says of
her dead Maidie: —' Never did I behold so beautiful an
object. It resembled the finest wax-work. There was in
the countenance an expression of sweetness and serenity
which seemed to indicate that the pure spirit had anticipated the joys of heaven ere it quitted the mortal frame.




28              Marjorie Fleming.
To tell you what your Maidie said of you would fill volumes;
for you was the constant theme of her discourse, the subject
of her thoughts, and ruler of her actions. The last time she
mentioned you was a few hours before all sense save that ot
suffering was suspended, when she said to Dr, Johnstone,
'If you will let me out at the New Year, I will be quite contented.' I asked what made her so anxious to get out then?
' I want to purchase a New Year's gift for Isa Keith with
the sixpence you gave me for being patient in the measles;
and I would like to choose it myself.' I do not remember
her speaking afterwards, except to complain of her head,
till just before she expired, when she articulated, "0,
mother! mother!"'
Do we make too much of this little child, who has been
in her grave in Abbotshall Kirkyard these fifty and more
years? We may of her cleverness-not of her affectionateness, her nature. What a picture the animosa infans gives
us of herself, her vivacity, her passionateness, her precocious
love-making, her passion for nature, for swine, for all living
things, her reading, her turn for expression, her satire, her
frankness, her little sins and rages, her great repentances!
We don't wonder Walter Scott carried her off in the neuk of
his plaid, and played himself with her for hours.
The year before she died, when in Edinburgh, she was at
a Twelfth Night supper at Scott's, in Castle Street. The
company had all come-all but Marjorie. Scott's familiars,
whom we all know, were there-all were come but Marjorie;
and all were dull because Scott was dull. 'Where's that
bairn? what can have come over her? I'll go myself and
see.' And he was getting up, and would have gone; when
the bell rang, and in came Duncan Roy and his henchman
Tougald, with the sedan chair, which was brought right into


*




M/arjorie Fleming.               29
the lobby, and its top raised. And there, in its darkness
and dingy old cloth, sat Maidie in white, her eyes gleaming,
and Scott bending over her in ecstasy-' hung over her
enamoured.' 'Sit ye there, my dautie, till they all see
you;' and forthwith he brought them all. You can fancy
the scene. And he lifted her up and marched to his seat
with her on his stout shoulder, and set her down beside
him; and then began the night, and such a night! Those
who knew Scott best said, that night was never equalled;
Maidie and he were the stars; and she gave them Constance's speeches and Helvellyn, the ballad then much in
vogue-and all her repertoire-Scott showing her off, and
being ofttimes rebuked by her for his intentional blunders.
We are indebted for the following-and our readers will
be not unwilling to share our obligations-to her sister: —
'Her birth was 15th January I803; her death i9th December i 8I. I take this from her Bibles.1  I believe she
was a child of robust health, of much vigour of body, and
beautifully formed arms, and until her last illness, never was
an hour in bed. She was niece to Mrs. Keith, residing in
No. i, North Charlotte Street, who was not Mrs. Murray
Keith, although very intimately acquainted with that old
lady. My aunt was a daughter of Mr. James Rae, surgeon,
and married the younger son of old Keith of Ravelstone.
Corstorphine Hill belonged to my aunt's husband; and his
eldest son, Sir Alexander Keith, succeeded his uncle to both
Ravelstone and Dunnottar. The Keiths were not connected by relationship with the Howisons of Braehead, but
my grandfather and grandmother (who was), a daughter of
Cant of Thurston and Giles-Grange, were on she most inJ Her Bible is before me; apair, as then called; the faded marks are
just as she placed them. There is one at David's lament over Jonathan.'




30               Marjorie Fleming.
timate footing with our Mrs. Keith's grandfather and grandmother; and so it has been for three generations, and the
friendship consummated by my cousin William Keith marrying Isabella Craufurd.
'As to my aunt and Scott, they were on a very intimate
footing. He asked my aunt to be godmother to his eldest
daughter Sophia Charlotte. I had a copy of Miss Edgeworth's "Rosamond, and Harry and Lucy" for long, which
was " a gift to Marjorie from Walter Scott," probably the
first edition of that attractive series, for it wanted " Frank,"
which is always now published as part of the series, under
the title of Early Lessons. I regret to say these little
volumes have disappeared.
'Sir Walter was no relation of Marjorie's, but of the
Keiths, through the Swintons; and, like Marjorie, he
stayed much at Ravelstone in his early days, with his grandaunt Mrs. Keith; and it was while seeing him there as a
boy, that another aunt of mine composed, when he was
about fourteen, the lines prognosticating his future fame
that Lockhart ascribes in his Life to Mrs. Cockburn,
authoress of" The Flowers of the Forest":
'Go on, dear youth, the glorious path pursue
Which bounteous Nature kindly smooths for you;
Go bid the seeds her hands have sown arise,
By timely culture, to their native skies;
Go, and employ the poet's heavenly art,
Not merely to delight, but mend the heart'
Mrs. Keir was my aunt's name, another of Dr. Rae's
daughters.'  We cannot better end than in words from
this same pen:-' I have to ask you to forgive my anxiety
in gathering up the fragments of Marjorie's last days,'but I
have an almost sacred feeling to all that pertains to her.
You are quite correct in stating that measles were the cause
of her death. My mother was struck by the patient quiet



Marjorie Fleming.                3 1
ness manifested by Marjorie during this illness, unlike her
ardent, impulsive nature; but love and poetic feeling were
unquenched. When Dr. Johnstone rewarded her submissiveness with a sixpence, the request speedily followed that
she might get out ere New Year's day came. When asked
why she was so desirous of getting out, she immediately rejoined, " Oh, I am so anxious to buy something with my sixpence for my dear Isa Keith." Again, when lying very'still,
her mother asked her if there was anything she wished:
"Oh yes! if you would just leave the-room door open a wee
bit, and play ' The Land o' the Leal,' and I will lie and
'think, and enjoy myself' (this is just as stated to me by her
mother and mine). Well, the happy day came, alike to
parents and child, when Marjorie was allowed to come forth
from the nursery to the parlour. It was Sabbath evening,
and after tea. My father, who idolized this child, and never
afterwards in my hearing mentioned her name, took her in
his arms; and while walking her up and down the room, she
said, " Father, I will repeat something to you;* what would
you like?" He said, " Just choose yourself, Maidie." She
hesitated for a moment between the paraphrase, " Few are
thy days, and full of woe," and the lines of Burns already
quoted, but decided on the latter, a remarkable choice for a
child. The repeating these lines seemed to stir up the
depths of feeling in her soul. She asked to be allowed to
wrrite a poem; there was a doubt whether it would be right
to allow her, in case of hurting her eyes. She pleaded
earnestly, " Just this once;" the point was yielded, her slate
was given her, and with great rapidity she wrote an address
of fourteen lines, " to her loved cousin on the author's recovery," her last work on earth
"Oh I Isa, pain did visit me,
I was at the last extremity;




32               Marjorie Fleming.
How often did I think of you,
I wished your graceful form to view,
To clasp you in my weak embrace,
Indeed I thought I'd run my race:
Good care, I'm sure, was of me taken,
But still indeed I was much shaken,
At last I daily strength did gain,
And oh! at last, away went pain;
At length the doctor thought I might
Stay in the parlor all the night;
I now continue so to do,
Farewell to Nancy and to you."
'She went to bed apparently well, awoke in the middle of
the night with the old cry of woe to a mother's heart,
"My head, my head!" Three days of the dire malady,
"water in the head," followed, and the end came.'
' Soft, silken primrose, fading timelessly.'
It is needless, it is impossible, to add anything to this:
the fervour, the sweetness, the flush of poetic ecstasy, the
lovely and glowing eye, the perfect nature of that bright and
warm intelligence, that darling child,-Lady Nairne's words,
and the old tune, stealing up from the depths of the human
heart, deep calling unto deep, gentle and strong like the
waves of the great sea hushing themselves to sleep in the
dark;-the words of Bums, touching the kindred chord, her
last numbers 'wildly sweet' traced, with thin and eager
fingers, already touched by the last enemy and friend,moriens canit,-and that love which is so soon to be her
everlasting light, is her song's burden to the end,
'She set as sets the morning star, which goes
Not down behind the darkened west, nor hides
Obscured among the tempests of the sky,
But melts away into the light of heaven.
Edinbrgh: T. Constaek, Printer to me Queen, and to he University.




WORKS BY DR. JOHN BROWN.
Extracted from " HORA SUBSECIVaE."
Rab and his Friends. 39th Thousand. Price 6d.
Our Dogs. 17th Thousand. Price 6d.
'With Brains, Sir.' 5th Thousand. Price 6d.
Arthur H. Hallam. Price 2s. Sewed; 2s. 6d. Cloth,
Gilt Edges.
Supplementary Chapter to the Life of Rev.
John   Brown, D.D.       Second Edition.  Foolscap.
Price 2s.
Shortly will be published, uniform with ' RAB AND HTS FRIENDS -
Minchmoor. Price 6d.
The Enterkin. Price 6d.
Jeems the Door-keeper. Price 6d.
Horas SubsecivaB.     1 Vol., Ex. Fcap. 8vo, Price 7s. 6d.
Rab and his Friends.         Illustrated Edition.  Small
4to, Antique Cloth, Price 5s.
EDINBURGH: EDMONSTON AND DOUGLAS.
LONDON: HAMILTON, A, ADAS,  CO.




New and Cheaper Illustrated Edition.


P ice 5s. Anttique Cloth,
RAB          AND           HIS         FRIENDS.
List of Plates.
DESIGNED BY          ENGRAVED BY
RAB, sicjacebat,..   GEORGE HARVEY, R.S.A.    T. BROWN.
THE PINCH OF SNUFF,     A. M.                     T. BROWN.
JESS IN HER STABLE,     (J. B.)                   LANDSEER.
AILIE DEAD,..    J. NOEL PATON, R.S. A.    R C. BELL.
JAMES AND HIS BURDEN, J. NOEL PATON, R.S.A.       R. C. BELL.
RAB'S GRAVE,..    GEORGE HARVEY, R.S.A.     W. MILLER.
'HIS COMPANIONS,'.     GEORGE HARVEY, R.S.A.    LUMB STOCKS.
' Rab and his Friends" is a very remarkable book. The illustrations
are beautiful, whether of human or brute life, and, though few, tell in
themselves a comprehensive story-for they include the beauty and the
glee of childhood, the dignity and the fortitude of manhood in old age;
the faded beauty of woman in suffering, patience, and death; the awful
serenity and peace of death; the loneliness of nature and of the hill-side
grave, and the instinctive affection and solicitude of a brute nature almost
human in its love, and more than humanL in its fidelity.'-Morning Post,
December I9.
Now ready, New and Cheaper Edition, One Vol., Foolscap 8vo, 7s. 6d.
HOR/E               SUBSECIV/E.
BY JOHN BROWN M.D., F.iRS.E.
FELLOW OF THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS, EDINBURGH.
"Of all the John Browns, commend us to Dr. John Brown." —Tmne
EDINBURGH: EDMONSTON AND DOUGLAS.
'3








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