Rab and His Friends and Other Papers - Brown John

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nor appreciating his fine sentiments and figures. After my mother's death, he preached in the same place, and Jean, running to her friend, took the first word, "It's a' gowd noo."

13

On a low chest of drawers in this room there lay for many years my mother's parasol, by his orders – I daresay, for long, the only one in Biggar.

14

His reading aloud of everything from John Gilpin to John Howe was a fine and high art, or rather gift. Henderson

15

With the practices of this last worthy, when carried on moderately, and for the sport's sake, he had a special sympathy.

16

I believe this was the true though secret source of much of my father's knowledge of the minute personal history of every one in his region, which – to his people, knowing his reserved manner and his devotion to his studies, and his so rarely meeting them or speaking to them, except from the pulpit, or at a diet of visitation – was a perpetual wonder, and of which he made great use in his dealings with his afflicted or erring members."

17

He was curiously destitute of all literary ambition or show; like the cactus in the desert, always plump, always taking in the dew of heaven, and caring little to give it out. He wrote many papers in the Repository and Monitor, an acute and clever tract on the Voluntary controversy, entitled Calm Answers to Angry Questions, and was the author of a capital bit of literary banter – a Congratulatory Letter to the Minister of Liber-ton, who had come down upon my father in a pamphlet, for his sermon on "There remaineth much land to be possessed." It is a mixture of Swift and Arbuthnot. I remember one of the flowers he culls from him he is congratulating, in which my father is characterized as one of those "shallow, sallow souls that would swallow the bait "without perceiving the cloven foot!" But a man like this never is best in a book; he is always greater than his work.

18

Well do I remember when driving him from Melrose to Kelso, long ago, we came near Sandyknowe, that grim tower of Smailholm, standing erect like a warrior turned to stone, defying time and change, his bursting into that noble ballad —

"The Baron of Smaylho'me rose with day,He spurr'd his courser on,Without stop or stay, down the rocky way,That leads to Brotherstone

19

After a tight discussion between these two attached friends, Dr. Wardlaw said, "Well, I can't answer you, but fish I must and shall."

20

He gave us all the education we got at Biggar.

21

One day my mother, and her only sister, Agnes – married to James Aitken of Callands, a man before his class and his time, for long the only Whig and Seceder laird in Peeblesshire, and with whom my father shared the Edinburgh Review from its beginning – the two sisters who were, the one to the other, as Martha was to Mary, sat talking of their household doings; my aunt was great upon some things she could do; my father looked up from his book, and said, "There is one thing, Mrs. Aitken, you cannot do – you cannot turn the heel of a stocking," and he was right, he had noticed her make over this "kittle" turn to her mother.

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