We saw a great many children of the poor out playing—rosy, fine little urchins, worth, any one of them, a dozen bleached, hothouse flowers. We stopped to hear them talk, and it was amusing to hear the Scotch of Walter Scott and Burns shouted out with such a right good will. We were as much struck by it as an honest Yankee was in Paris by the proficiency of the children in speaking French.
The next day we bade farewell to Glasgow, overwhelmed with kindness to the last, and only oppressed by the thought, how little that was satisfactory we were able to give in return.
Again in the railroad car on our way to Edinburgh. A pleasant two hours' trip is this from Glasgow to Edinburgh. When the cars stopped at Linlithgow station, the name started us as out of a dream.
There, sure enough, before our eyes, on a gentle eminence stood the mouldering ruins of which Scott has sung:—
"Of all the palaces so fair,
Built for the royal dwelling,
In Scotland, far beyond compare
Linlithgow is excelling;
And in its park in genial June,
How sweet the merry linnet's tune,