He was a great lover of Shakespeare,
whom he read aloud, I have been told, with taste; well, I love my
Shakespeare also, and am persuaded I can read him well, though I
own I never have been told so. He made embroidery, designing his
own patterns; and in that kind of work I never made anything but a
kettle-holder in Berlin wool, and an odd garter of knitting, which
was as black as the chimney before I had done with it. He loved
port, and nuts, and porter; and so do I, but they agreed better
with my grandfather, which seems to me a breach of contract. He
had chalk-stones in his fingers; and these, in good time, I may
possibly inherit, but I would much rather have inherited his noble
presence. Try as I please, I cannot join myself on with the
reverend doctor; and all the while, no doubt, and even as I write
the phrase, he moves in my blood, and whispers words to me, and
sits efficient in the very knot and centre of my being. In his
garden, as I played there, I learned the love of mills - or had I
an ancestor a miller? - and a kindness for the neighbourhood of
graves, as homely things not without their poetry - or had I an
ancestor a sexton? But what of the garden where he played himself?
- for that, too, was a scene of my education. Some part of me
played there in the eighteenth century, and ran races under the
green avenue at Pilrig; some part of me trudged up Leith Walk,
which was still a country place, and sat on the High School
benches, and was thrashed, perhaps, by Dr.
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