"I was a poet in those days—they tell me I am a bard still—but I fear my verses have lost the fire and frenzy of youth. Never mind, in those dear foolish days I learned nothing that was not pleasant, I did nothing I could not find pleasure in. With gun on shoulder I used to start for the hill. Too often my gun was thrown on the heather, and I lay down beside it in the sun to versify and dream. Or I might take my fishing-rod, and with my dog Kooran at my heels, set off for the lonesome tarn or mountain burn; but, ah, me! the fish seldom rose to my flies, and the streamlet sang to me, and I to the streamlet—there was music in everything around me, in the sailing clouds, in the waving broom, the drooping birch-trees and dark solemn pines themselves.
"Did my conscience never tell me I was doing wrong? It did at times. There were moments when the stern realities of life used to force themselves upon my thoughts. Surely man was made and meant for something better than to be an idle dreamer. Then I would start and awake as if from a lethargy. I would look around me, and even blush to see all men busy but myself, all creatures toiling, yet all, all happier even than I.
"What should I be? What should I be? How often the question would keep recurring to my mind. Be a soldier like my father? No, I cared not for camps and fighting. Be a sailor, and go sailing over the world. Yes, that was better; but the work, it was the work I feared. To sail on, on, on, for ever over sunlit summer seas would have suited me. But seas are not always sunlit, and storms arise, and—no, I would not be a sailor.
"Why not live to sing as Byron, Ossian, and Burns had done? But I must have some one else save the birds and streams and trees to sing to. Then a gloomy spell came over the spirit of my dream, and I thought myself the most miserable of all created beings. The linnet that sang among the golden furze, his nest not far away, seemed to laugh at me. The linnet had love. The wild deer in the forest shook their antlered heads, and appeared to despise me in my forlornness, they were as happy as the summer's day was glad and long. The eagle that floated high above the clouds mocked me. He could soar. Oh, how I wished and wanted to soar! Everything too about me was so lovely, I had a poet's eye for beauty. Even the metallic lustre on the beetles that crept through the grass shot rays of pleasure to my heart. 'Was it possible,' I said to myself one day, as I lounged by a river side. 'Was it possible for me to transfer some of the beauty I saw around me to canvas? Why not? Others have done so. I had been to the great city of London, I had revelled in picture-galleries, all the memory of pictures I had seen came back to me now with a force I had never felt before. Hurrah!' I shouted, starting up, 'I will be an artist. I will build my own castles. Away, fairies, away I'll dream no more. I'll be a man. I am a man.'
"My poor dog must have thought I'd gone mad. I broke my fishing-rod across my knee and flung it far into the dark brown stream, and once more shouted till the wild coneys fled into their holes on the cairney hill sides.
"No, my mother did not object; I should have the best of teachers; the best of teaching; I should go to London; go to Rome. My pictures should be hung, I'd make wealth and fame, her darling boy should be——"
Here old Eean paused for a moment. He shook the ashes from his pipe with a gesture almost of anger.
"Dreams! Dreams! Dreams!" he muttered.
"Boys, I had not learned the art of application early enough in youth, I was thoughtless, my dear mother said in excuse for me, and thoughtlessness was natural to youth.
"But, oh, lads, listen! Thoughtlessness is not, should not be, natural to youths. Life's stern battle is all before them; should they be thoughtless or careless as they gird up their loins to meet the foe? Life's stormy ocean is rolling resistlessly on towards their frail barques; how shall they mount those heaving seas, how fight against wind and tempest, if they trust all to blind chance? I tell you what—and he who tells you knows—that thoughtfulness must be your guide to every good in life; ay, and to the world beyond as well, Oh, my dear lads, grasp these truths, and never, never forget them! Act on them too, and they will make you men, yes, heroes.