According to the Englishman’s request, I gave him my name, and received his in return; and, shaking hands over the grave of poor Crabbe, we parted.
“Good God!” said I to myself, as I left the churchyard, “it appears, then, that at the very moment when this generous soldier was meditating a wise and moral plan to win his debased parent to honour and salvation—at that very moment I was allowing my heart to entertain a groundless feeling of dislike to him.” My second more pleasing reflection was, that this unmanly prejudice had easily given way. How could it last, under the awful presence of Death, who is the great apostle of human charity? Moreover, from the course of incidents above mentioned, I have derived this important lesson for myself:—Never to allow a hasty opinion, drawn from a man’s little peculiarities of manner or appearance, particularly from the features of his face, or the shape of his head, as explained by the low quackeries of Lavater and Spurzheim, to decide unfavourably against a man, who, for aught I truly know, may be worthy of unqualified esteem.
ANENT AULD GRANDFAITHER, AUNTIE BELL, MY AIN FAITHER, &c.
By D. M. Moir.
The sun rises bright in France,
And fair sets he;
But he has tint the blithe blink he had
In my ain countree.
Allan Cunningham.
Auld Grandfaither died when I was a growing callant, some seven or aught year auld; yet I mind him full weel; it being a curious thing how early such matters take haud of ane’s memory. He was a straught, tall, auld man, with a shining bell-pow, and reverend white locks hinging down about his haffets; a Roman nose, and twa cheeks blooming through the winter of his lang age like roses, when, puir body, he was sand-blind with infirmity. In his latter days he was hardly able to crawl about alane; but used to sit resting himself on the truff seat before our door, leaning forit his head on his staff, and finding a kind of pleasure in feeling the beams of God’s ain sun beaking on him. A blackbird, that he had tamed, hung above his head in a whand cage of my faither’s making; and he had taken a pride in learning it to whistle twa or three turns of his ain favourite sang, “Ower the Water to Charlie.”