Next day a man called Abner Blair called to see Robert about his taxes, and I was repacking a trunk with trifles, I did not wish to use in so small a house. He watched me, and lifted some of the books and tartan things. His fingers clung to them, and I could see that he was in a great mental tumult.
“Are you Scotch, Mr. Blair?” I asked.
“Scotch!” he cried. “I’m nothing else. Highland Scotch, from Aberdeen way! Scotch for a thousand years! Scotch from the creation itself! My wife is Scotch, and my children are Scotch, and there’s nothing in Blair house that isn’t Scotch.”
“Then,” I said, “if you are from Aberdeen way, you will know what this is;” and I held up the Scotch pebble bracelet I had bought on that last walk I took up Buchanan Street, Glasgow.
He looked for a moment at the ornament, then he touched it, and asked, “What will you take for it, I have a little lassie that would go crazy to wear it. She will be twenty-one on Sunday next. Sell me the pretty thing. My certie! I used to go gathering the stones—I did that—I wanted them to pay my way through St. Andrews. What will you take for it?”
“I will give it to you for your daughter’s birthday,” I answered. “I’ll give it to her with all kinds of good wishes.”
“I take you at your word,” he said in a perfect enthusiasm of pleasure. “And I’ll tell you what! I’ll give you the best milch cow on Abner Blair’s ranch, and I’ll bring her in to you on Saturday.”
“Come back in half an hour,” I said, “and I will clean the silver settings and make them bright.” He came back and went off with the bawble proud and happy, and on Thursday brought me a milk cow which justified all his promises. But as I rubbed bright the silver setting, and very often since, I have wondered what power had prompted me in 1853, to buy a bracelet which I did not want, which I was rather ashamed of buying, in order that it might get me and my children plenty of milk and butter in 1863, when such things were scarce and dear, and under ordinary circumstances beyond procuring.
My life in the Cartmel place was only a variation and accentuation 248 of what it had been in the Cook place. I did more and more work for the government, and at the end of the year I confessed, that it had been money in the purse, and not so well for me in other ways. The children’s lessons had been much neglected, and the half-hour I had given daily to private prayer, ever since I was twelve years old, had been put aside for ruling tax papers, or something else that seemed more important. But this putting aside was neither happiness nor true prosperity. It implied a trust in myself, rather than in God; and I do believe at this day, as I did really then, that if I had gone on doing my own duties, God would have sent the necessary money in some easier and better way.
I notice in my diary, that soon after the New Year, Robert was often on guard most of the night. There was at this time a great terror of negro insurrections, and often I put the children to bed fully dressed, in case there was a necessity to flee for life. We had all our plans made for this emergency, the first and most surely safe one being, a quick retreat to the grave yard, for no negro would venture within its ghostly precinct. The nights Robert was on guard, I always had company, very often a Miss Sophia Richardson, the daughter of the editor of the Austin Gazette. She was a beautiful woman, well read, witty and yet good-natured, and a singer of great power and sweetness. She married after I left Austin the editor of the New Orleans Picayune, and if this remembrance ever reaches her eyes, I want her to think of me, as she knew me when we used to be happy together in the old log house on the hill. It stood next to her own home. Here are two notes on this life: