When in harbour, both Captain D’Acre and his mate used to be constant visitors, and the mate never failed to bring his fiddle. Then a regular musical evening was sure to follow, much to Mrs. M‘Crae’s delight, for she was passionately fond of melody.
Summer after summer, Sandie continued coaching his pupils, remunerating to both teacher and students, and winter after winter he plodded back and fore to the Divinity Hall. He was a pet student with all the professors, because he was a very promising one. Whatever study he took in hand, he went into thoroughly, and was not content until he had mastered it. That is the sort of man Sandie was.
But the winters and the summers too wore away at last,—Sandie’s divinity studies were over. He had passed every examination with honour, and was now the Rev. Alexander M‘Crae, M.A.
What joy!
All his toils were over—so he thought; he would soon get a church—so he believed; and he would take his mother away to his beautiful home in the cool green country, far away from the madding crowd, from the bustle and din, from the grime and the gride of city life. As hope told him this flattering tale, he could not help repeating to himself those charming lines of Horace, beginning
“Beatus ille qui preul negotiis,
. . . . . .
Paterna rura bubus exercit suis
Solutus omni fenore,”
which may be paraphrased: “Happy is the man who, far from the busy haunts of life, far from care and worry, ploughs with his own oxen the paternal acres.”
But Sandie’s life while at the Divinity Hall had not been all bliss unalloyed. There was one drawback to his happiness. Let me explain it, if I can. Sandie, then, was constitutionally shy.
Now shyness is about the worst fault a public orator or preacher can have, though I must not omit to mention that the cleverest men are usually the shyest.
In the privacy of his own study, which was right away up at the top of Kilbuie Cottage, an attic, in fact, Sandie, when all alone, could declaim triumphantly, and many a rousing extempore sermon he here preached. Again, he could preach a sermon anywhere, and with confidence, if he had written it out beforehand, and might have the manuscript on the pulpit desk in front of him. But well he knew that many old people in country parishes had a decided objection to written sermons. They liked their ministers to walk into the pulpit, to take a text, and trust to the Spirit of God to give them language and words.