And changing "though" into "if:"
"A well of love it may be deep,
I trust it is, and never dry;
What matter, though its waters sleep
In silence and obscurity?"
The expression of his affection was more like the shock of a Leyden jar, than the continuous current of a galvanic circle.
There was, as I have said, a permanent chill given by my mother's death, to what may be called the outer surface of his nature, and we at home felt it much. The blood was thrown in upon the centre, and went forth in energetic and victorious work, in searching the Scriptures and saving souls; but his social faculty never recovered that shock! it was blighted; he was always desiring to be alone and at his work. A stranger who saw him for a short time, bright, animated, full of earnest and cordial talk, pleasing and being pleased, the life of the company, was apt to think how delightful he must always be,—and so he was; but these times of bright talk were like angels' visits; and he smiled with peculiar benignity on his retiring guest, as if blessing him not the less for leaving him to himself. I question if there ever lived a man so much in the midst of men, and in the midst of his own children, * in whom the silences, as Mr. Carlyle would say, were so predominant. Every Sabbath he spoke out of the abundance of his heart, his whole mind; he was then communicative and frank enough: all the week, before and after, he would not unwillingly have never opened his mouth. Of many people we may say that their mouth is always open except when it is shut; of him that his mouth was always shut except when it was opened. Every one must have been struck with the seeming inconsistency of his occasional brilliant, happy, energetic talk, and his habitual silentness—his difficulty in getting anything to say. But, as I have already said, what we lost, the world and the church gained.
* He gave us all the education we got at Biggar.
When travelling he was always in high spirits and full of anecdote and fun. Indeed I knew more of his inner history in this one way, than during years of living with him. I recollect his taking me with him to Glasgow when I must have been about fourteen; we breakfasted in The Rain's Horn Tavern, and I felt a new respect for him at his commanding the waiters. He talked a great deal during our short tour, and often have I desired to recal the many things he told me of his early life, and of his own religious crises, my mother's death, his fear of his own death, and all this intermingled with the drollest stories of his boy and student life.
We went to Paisley and dined, I well remember, we two alone, and, as I thought, magnificently, in a great apartment in The Saracen's Head, at the end of which was the county ball-room. We had come across from Dunoon and landed in a small boat at the Water Neb along with Mrs. Dr. Hall, a character Sir Walter or Galt would have made immortal. My father with characteristic ardour took an oar, for the first time in his life, and I believe for the last, to help the old boatman on the Cart, and wishing to do something decided, missed the water, and went back head over heels to the immense enjoyment of Mrs. Hall, who said, "Less pith, and mair to the purpose, my man." She didn't let the joke die out.