"O Adam!" returned she, "how can you say forget!—Never—never!"
"Enough—enough!" he continued, and they wept together.
It was scarce daybreak when Adam rose to take his departure, and to bid his mother and his brethren farewell. "Oh!" exclaimed she, as she placed his breakfast before him, "is this the last meal that my bairn's to eat in my house?" He ate but little; and she continued, weeping as she spoke, "Eat, hinny, eat; ye have a lang road before ye. And, O Adam! aboon everything earthly, mind that ye write to me every week; never think o' the postage—for, though it should tak my last farthing, I maun hear frae ye."
He took his staff in his hand, and prepared to depart. He embraced his younger brothers, and tears were their only and mutual adieu. His parent sobbed aloud. "Fareweel, mother!" said he, in a voice half-choked with anguish—"fareweel!"
"God bless my bairn!" she exclaimed, wringing his hand, and she leaned her head upon his shoulder, and wept as though her heart would burst. In agony, he tore himself from her embrace, and hurried from the house; and during the first miles of his journey, at every rising ground, he turned anxiously round, to obtain another lingering look of the place of his nativity; and, in the fulness and bitterness of his feelings, he pronounced the names of his mother, and his brethren, and of Mary Douglas, in the same breath.
We need not describe his passage to London, nor tell how he stood gazing wonderstruck, like a graven image of amazement, as the vessel winded up the Thames, through the long forests of masts, from which waved the flags of every nation.
It was about mid-day, early in the month of April, when the smack drew up off Hermitage Stairs, and Adam was aroused from his reverie of astonishment, by a waterman who had come upon deck, and who, pulling him by the buttonhole, said, "Boat, master? boat!" Adam did not exactly understand the question, but, seeing the other passengers getting their luggage into the boats, he followed their example. On landing, he was surrounded by a group of porters, several of whom took hold of his trunk, all inquiring, at the same moment, where he wished it taken to. This was a question he could not answer. It was one he had never thought of before. He looked confused, and replied, "I watna."
"Watna!" said one of the Cockney burden-bearers—"Watna!—there an't such a street in all London."
Adam was in the midst of London, and he knew not a living soul among its million of inhabitants. He knew not where to go; but, recollecting that one of the gentlemen to whom Mr Douglas had recommended him was a Mr Davison, a merchant in Cornhill, he inquired—
"Does ony o' ye ken a Mr Davison, a merchant in Cornhill?"