We’ll a’ be proud o’ Robin.’
“Shortly afterwards, as if to begin the fulfillment of the carline’s prophecy, the storm, rising higher and higher, at length blew down a gable of the dwelling. No one was hurt, however, and the broken gable of a clay ‘bigging’ was not a thing beyond repair.
“Such were the circumstances and such was the scene of the birth of the great peasant-poet. Much change, no doubt, has taken place in the appearance both of the cottage and of the countryside since the twenty-fifth of January in the year 1759; but after all it is the same countryside, and the cottage is on the identical spot. Within these walls one pictures the poet in his childish years:
“There, lonely by the ingle-cheek
He sat, and eyed the spueing reek
That filled wi’ hoast-provoking smeek
The auld clay biggin’,
And heard the restless rattons squeak
Aboot the riggin’.”
And in this rude apartment the immortal scene of “The Cotter’s Saturday Night” was enacted—and here it occurred to us to ask Mr. Dobson to give us his conception of the family group at worship—how well he has succeeded the accompanying picture shows. We will be pardoned, I am sure, the repetition of the oft-quoted lines in connection with the artist’s graphic representation of a scene already familiar the world over.