"Douglas Hotel, Aberdeen,
14th July 1880.
"My dear Love,— ... I had some fun yesterday with a class of people I detest—those who, because a man has been studious, and has written books, count that he is public property, who may be hailed by any one like a mountebank or street musician.
"There were some forty or fifty at dinner, and I found from the tenor of the conversation that I was taken for the American Judge Haliburton, the author of 'Sam Slick,' and other embodiments of smart Yankeyism. No direct question on the point was put to me, and I let the affair take its run, though a good deal to the bewilderment of some people, who I saw really knew me.[21] Good cold weather: seeing one by one the remnants of my generation of school and college friends.—Love to all, from your affectionate
"J.H. Burton.
"P.S.—On Monday I hired a boat, or small ship, and went a-hunting after antiquities. Passing Wire and Rousay, I recalled some association in the names, and I think it was with poor nurse Barbara. I was able to call on Mat.'s old friend, Mrs Burroughs; her husband, now General, was out. They live in great grandeur, on about the dreariest hillside Nature ever created."
"Banchory, 16th July 1880.
"My dear Love,—I am here in the scene of many recollections going back to boyhood, and the interest of them takes a zest from knowing that you, too, must have stored up associations with the spot, though of a later period. I think the avenue trees at Blackhall were cut down before your day. They are not now much missed in the general landscape. The lapse of half a century has given such a growth to the surrounding plantations, that where I remember bare hills, or freshly planted and uglier than bare, there are now great stretches deserving to be called forest land."