Tne November afternoon in 1810,—the year in which "Waverley" was resumed and laid aside again, to be finished off, its last two volumes in three weeks, and made immortal in 1814, and when its author, by the death of Lord Melville, narrowly escaped getting a civil appointment in India,—three men, evidently lawyers, might have been seen escaping like school-boys from the Parliament House, and speeding arm in arm down Bank Street and the Mound, in the teeth of a surly blast of sleet.

The three friends sought the bield of the low wall old Edinburgh boys remember well, and sometimes miss now, as they struggle with the stout west-wind.

The three were curiously unlike each other. One, "a little man of feeble make, who would be unhappy if his pony got beyond a foot pace," slight, with "small, elegant features, hectic cheek, and soft hazel eyes, the index of the quick, sensitive spirit within, as if he had the warm heart of a woman, her genuine enthusiasm, and some of her weaknesses." Another, as unlike a woman as a man can be; homely, almost common, in look and figure; his hat and his coat, and indeed his entire covering, worn to the quick, but all of the best material; what redeemed him from vulgarity and meanness were his eyes, deep set, heavily thatched, keen, hungry, shrewd, with a slumbering glow far in, as if they could be dangerous; a man to care nothing for at first glance, but, somehow, to give a second and not-forgetting look at. The third was the biggest of the three, and though lame, nimble, and all rough and alive with power; had you met him anywhere else, you would say he was a Liddesdale store-farmer, come of gentle blood; "a stout, blunt carle," as he says of himself, with the swing and stride and the eye of a man of the hills,—a large, sunny, out-of-door air all about him. On his broad and somewhat stooping shoulders was set that head which, with Shakespeare\'s and Bonaparte\'s, is the best known in all the world.

He was in high spirits, keeping his companions and himself in roars of laughter, and every now and then seizing them, and stopping, that they might take their fill of the fun; there they stood shaking with laughter, "not an inch of their body free" from its grip. At George Street they parted, one to Rose Court, behind St. Andrew\'s Church, one to Albany Street, the other, our big and limping friend, to Castle Street.

We need hardly give their names. The first was William Erskine, afterwards Lord Kinnedder, chased out of the world by a calumny, killed by its foul breath,—
"And at the touch of wrong, without a strife,
  Slipped in a moment out of life."

There is nothing in literature more beautiful or more pathetic than Scott\'s love and sorrow for this friend of his youth.

The second was William Clerk,—the Darsie Latimer of "Redgauntlet"; "a man," as Scott says, "of the most acute intellects and powerful apprehension," but of more powerful indolence, so as to leave the world with little more than the report of what he might have been,—a humorist as genuine, though not quite so savagely Swiftian as his brother Lord Eldon, neither of whom had much of that commonest and best of all the humors, called good.

The third we all know. What has he not done for every one of us? Who else ever, except Shakespeare, so diverted mankind, entertained and entertains a world so liberally, so wholesomely? We are fain to say, not even Shakespeare, for his is something deeper than diversion, something higher than pleasure, and yet who would care to split this hair?

Had any one watched him closely before and after the parting, what a change he would see! The bright, broad laugh, the shrewd, jovial word, the man of the Parliament House and of the world, and, next step, moody, the light of his eye withdrawn, as if seeing things that were invisible; his shut mouth, like a child\'s, so impressionable, so innocent, so sad: he was now all within, as before he was all without; hence his brooding look. As the snow blattered in his face, he muttered, "How it raves and drifts! On-ding o\' snaw,—ay, that\'s the word,—on-ding—" He was now at his own door, "Castle Street, No. 39." He opened the door, and went straight to his den; that wondrous workshop, where, in one year, 1823, when he was fifty-two, he wrote "Peveril of the Peak," "Quentin Durward," and "St. Ronan\'s Well," besides much else. We once took the foremost of our novelists, the greatest, we would say, since Scott, into this room, and could not but mark the solemnizing effect of sitting where the great magician sat so often and so long, and looking out upon that little shabby bit of sky, and that back green where faithful Camp lies.1

    1 This favorite dog "died about January, 1809, and was buried, in a fine moonlight night, in the little garden behind the house in Castle Street. My wife tells me she remembers the whole family in tears about the grave, as her father himself smoothed the turf above Camp with the saddest face she had ever seen. He had been engaged to dine abroad that day, but apologized on account of the death of \'a dear old friend.\'"—Lockhart\'s Life of Scott.

He sat down in his large, green morocco elbow-chair, drew himself close to his table, and glowered and gloomed at his writing apparatus, "a very handsome old box, richly carved, lined with crimson velvet, and containing ink-bottles, taper-stand, etc., in silver, the whole in such order that it might have come from the silversmith\'s window half an hour before." He took out his paper, then, starting up angrily, said, "\'Go spin, you jade, go spin.\' No, d—— it, it won\'t do:—
\'My spinnin\'-wheel is auld and stiff;
     The rock o\'t wunna stand, sir;
 To keep the temper-pin in tiff
     Employs ower aft my hand, sir.\'

I am off the fang.2 I can make nothing of \'Waverley\' to-day; I\'ll awa\' to Marjorie. Come wi\' me, Maida, you thief." The great creature rose slowly, and the pair were off, Scott taking a maud (a plaid) with him. "White as a frosted plum-cake, by jingo!" said he, when he got to the street. Maida gambolled and whisked among the snow; and her master strode across to Young Street, and through it to 1 North Charlotte Street, to the house of his dear friend, Mrs. William Keith of Corstorphine Hill, niece of Mrs. Keith of Ravelston, of whom he said at her death, eight years after, "Much tradition, and that of the best, has died with this excellent old lady, one of the few persons whose spirits and cleanliness and freshness of mind and body made old age lovely and desirable."

    2 Applied to a pump when it is dry and its valve has lost its "fang."

Sir Walter was in that house almost every day, and had a key, so in he and the hound went, shaking themselves in the lobby. "Marjorie! Marjorie!" shouted her friend, "where are ye, my bonnie wee croodlin doo?" In a moment a bright, eager child of seven was in his arms, and he was kissing her all over. Out came Mrs. Keith. "Come yer ways in, Wattie." "No, not now. I am going to take Marjorie wi\' me, and you may come to your tea in Duncan Roy\'s sedan, and bring the bairn home in your lap." "Tak\' Marjorie, and it on-ding o\' snaw!" said Mrs. Keith. He said to himself, "On-ding—that\'s odd—that is the very word." "Hoot, awa\'! look here," and he displayed the corner of his plaid, made to hold lambs,—the true shepherd\'s plaid, consisting of two breadths sewed together, and uncut at one end, making a poke or cul de sac. "Tak\' yer lamb," said she, laughing at the contrivance; and so the Pet was first well happit up, and then put, laughing silently, into the plaid neuk, and the shepherd strode off with his lamb,—Maida gambolling through the snow, and running races in her mirth.

Didn\'t he face "the angry airt," and make her bield his bosom, and into his own room with her, and lock the door, and out with the warm, rosy little wifie, who took it all with great composure! There the two remained for three or more hours, making the house ring with their laughter; you can fancy the big man\'s and Maidie\'s laugh. Having made the fire cheery, he set her down in his ample chair, and, standing sheepishly before her, began to say his lesson, which happened to be, "Ziccotty, diccotty, dock, the mouse ran up the clock, the clock struck wan, down the mouse ran, ziccotty, diccotty, dock." This done repeatedly till she was pleased, she gave him his new lesson, gravely and slowly, timing it upon her small fingers,—he saying it after her,—
"Wonery, twoery, tickery, seven;
  Alibi, crackaby, ten, and eleven;
  Pin, pan, musky, dan;
  Tweedle-um, twoddle-um,
  Twenty-wan; eerie, orie, ourie,
  You, are, out."

He pretended to great difficulty, and she rebuked him with most comical gravity, treating him as a child. He used to say that when he came to Alibi Crackaby he broke down, and pin-Pan, Musky-dan, Tweedle-um, Twoddle-um made him roar with laughter. He said Musky-Dan especially was beyond endurance, bringing up an Irishman and his hat fresh from the Spice Islands and odoriferous Ind; she getting quite bitter in her displeasure at his ill behavior and stupidness.

Then he would read ballads to her in his own glorious way, the two getting wild with excitement over "Gil Morrice" or the "Baron of Smailholm"; and he would take her on his knee, and make her repeat Constance\'s speeches in "King John," till he swayed to and fro, sobbing his fill. Fancy the gifted little creature, like one possessed, repeating,—
"For I am sick, and capable of fears,—
  Oppressed with wrong, and, therefore, full of fears;
  A widow, husbandless, subject to fears;
  A woman, naturally born to fears."

"If thou, that bidst me be content, wert grim,
  Ugly, and slanderous to thy mother\'s womb,—
  Lame, foolish, crooked, swart, prodigious—"

Or, drawing herself up "to the height of her great argument,"—
"I will instruct my sorrows to be proud,
  For grief is proud, and makes his owner stout.
  Here I and sorrow sit."

Scott used to say that he was amazed at her power over him, saying to Mrs. Keith, "She\'s the most extraordinary creature I ever met with, and her repeating of Shakespeare overpowers me as nothing else does."

Thanks to the little book whose title heads this paper, and thanks still more to the unforgetting sister of this dear child, who has much of the sensibility and fun of her who has been in her small grave these fifty and more years, we have now before us the letters and journals of Pet Marjorie: before us lies and gleams her rich brown hair, bright and sunny as if yesterday\'s, with the words on the paper, "Cut out in her last illness," and two pictures of her by her beloved Isabella, whom she worshipped; there are the faded old scraps of paper, hoarded still, over which her warm breath and her warm little heart had poured themselves; there is the old watermark, "Lingard, 1808." The two portraits are very like each other, but plainly done at different times; it is a chubby, healthy face, deep-set, brooding eyes, as eager to tell what is going on within as to gather in all the glories from without; quick with the wonder and the pride of life: they are eyes that would not be soon satisfied with seeing; eyes that would devour their object, and yet childlike and fearless; and that is a mouth that will not be soon satisfied with love; it has a curious likeness to Scott\'s own, which has always appeared to us his sweetest, most mobile, and speaking feature.

There she is, looking straight at us as she did at him,—fearless, and full of love, passionate, wild, wilful, fancy\'s child. One cannot look at it without thinking of Wordsworth\'s lines on poor Hartley Coleridge:—
"O blessed vision, happy child!
  Thou art so exquisitely wild,
  I thought of thee with many fears,—
  Of what might be thy lot in future years.
  I thought of times when Pain might be thy guest,
  Lord of thy house and hospitality;
  And Grief, uneasy lover! ne\'er at rest
  But when she sat within the touch of thee.
  O too industrious folly!
  O vain and causeless melancholy!
  Nature will either end thee quite,
  Or, lengthening out thy season of delight,
  Preserve for thee, by individual right,
  A young lamb\'s heart among the full-grown flock."

And we can imagine Scott, when holding his warm, plump little playfellow in his arms, repeating that stately friend\'s lines:—
"Loving she is, and tractable, though wild;
  And Innocence hath privilege in her,
  To dignify arch looks and laughing eyes
  And feats of cunning, and the pretty round
  Of trespasses, affected to provoke
  Mock chastisement and partnership in play.
  And, as a fagot sparkles on the hearth
  Not less if unattended and alone
  Than when both young and old sit gathered round
  And take delight in its activity,
  Even so this happy creature of herself
  Is all-sufficient; solitude to her
  Is blithe society: she fills the air
  With gladness and involuntary songs."

But we will let her disclose herself. We need hardly say that all this is true, and that these letters are as really Marjorie\'s as was this light brown hair; indeed, you could as easily fabricate the one as the other.

There was an old servant—Jeanie Robertson—who was forty years in her grandfather\'s family. Marjorie Fleming, or, as she is called in the letters and by Sir Walter, Maidie, was the last child she kept. Jeanie\'s wages never exceeded ￡3 a year, and when she left service she had saved ￡40. She was devotedly attached to Maidie, rather despising and ill-using her sister Isabella,—a beautiful and gentle child. This partiality made Maidie apt at times to domineer over Isabella. "I mention this," writes her surviving sister, "for the purpose of telling you an instance of Maidie\'s generous justice. When only five years old, when walking in Raith grounds, the two children had run on before, and old Jeanie remembered they might come too near a dangerous mill-lade. She called to them to turn back. Maidie heeded her not, rushed all the faster on, and fell, and would have been lost, had her sister not pulled her back, saving her life, but tearing her clothes. Jeanie flew on Isabella to \'give it her\' for spoiling her favorite\'s dress; Maidie rushed in between, crying out, \'Pay (whip) Maidjie as much as you like, and I\'ll not say one word; but touch Isy, and I\'ll roar like a bull!\' Years after Maidie was resting in her grave, my mother used to take me to the place, and told the story always in the exact same words." This Jeanie must have been a character. She took great pride in exhibiting Maidie\'s brother William\'s Calvinistic acquirements when nineteen months old, to the officers of a militia regiment then quartered in Kirkcaldy. This performance was so amusing that it was often repeated, and the little theologian was presented by them with a cap and feathers. Jeanie\'s glory was "putting him through the carritch" (catechism) in broad Scotch, beginning at the beginning with "Wha made ye, ma bonnie man?" For the correctness of this and the three next replies, Jeanie had no anxiety, but the tone changed to menace, and the closed nieve (fist) was shaken in the child\'s face as she demanded, "Of what are you made?" "DIRT," was the answer uniformly given. "Wull ye never learn to say dust, ye thrawn deevil?" with a cuff from the opened hand, was the as inevitable rejoinder.

Here is Maidie\'s first letter, before she was six. The spelling is unaltered, and there are no "commoes."

    "MY DEAR ISA,—I now sit down to answer all your kind and beloved letters which you was so good as to write to me. This is the first time I ever wrote a letter in my Life. There are a great many Girls in the Square, and they cry just like a pig when we are under the painfull necessity of putting it to Death. Miss Potune, a Lady of my acquaintance, praises me dreadfully. I repeated something out of Dean Swift, and she said I was fit for the stage, and you may think I was primmed up with majestick Pride, but upon my word I felt myselfe turn a little birsay,—birsay is a word which is a word that William composed which is as you may suppose a little enraged. This horrid fat simpliton says that my Aunt is beautifull, which is intirely impossible, for that is not her nature."

What a peppery little pen we wield! What could that have been out of the Sardonic Dean? What other child of that age would have used "beloved" as she does? This power of affection, this faculty of beloving, and wild hunger to be beloved, comes out more and more. She perilled her all upon it, and it may have been as well—we know, indeed, that it was far better—for her that this wealth of love was so soon withdrawn to its one only infinite Giver and Receiver. This must have been the law of her earthly life. Love was indeed "her Lord and King"; and it was perhaps well for her that she found so soon that her and our only Lord and King Himself is Love.

Here are bits from her Diary at Braehead: "The day of my existence here has been delightful and enchanting. On Saturday I expected no less than three well-made Bucks, the names of whom is here advertised. Mr. Geo. Crakey (Craigie), and Wm. Keith, and Jn. Keith,—the first is the funniest of every one of them. Mr. Crakey and I walked to Craky-hall (Craigiehall), hand in hand in Innocence and matitation (meditation) sweet thinking on the kind love which flows in our tender-hearted mind which is overflowing with majestic pleasure no one was ever so polite to me in the hole state of my existence. Mr. Craky you must know is a great Buck, and pretty good-looking.

"I am at Ravelston enjoying nature\'s fresh air. The birds are singing sweetly, the calf doth frisk, and nature shows her glorious face."

Here is a confession: "I confess I have been very more like a little young divil than a creature for when Isabella went up stairs to teach me religion and my multiplication and to be good and all my other lessons I stamped with my foot and threw my new hat which she had made on the ground and was sulky and was dreadfully passionate, but she never whiped me but said Marjory go into another room and think what a great crime you are committing letting your temper git the better of you. But I went so sulkily that the Devil got the better of me but she never never never whips me so that I think I would be the better of it and the next time that I behave ill I think she should do it for she never never does it.... Isabella has given me praise for checking my temper for I was sulky even when she was kneeling an hole hour teaching me to write."

Our poor little wifie,—she has no doubts of the personality of the Devil! "Yesterday I behave extremely ill in God\'s most holy church for I would never attend myself nor let Isabella attend which was a great crime for she often, often tells me that when to or three are geathered together God is in the midst of them, and it was the very same Divil that tempted Job that tempted me I am sure; but he resisted Satan though he had boils and many many other misfortunes which I have escaped.... I am now going to tell you the horible and wretched plaege (plague) that my multiplication gives me you can\'t conceive it the most Devilish thing is 8 times 8 and 7 times 7 it is what nature itself cant endure."

This is delicious; and what harm is there in her "Devilish"? It is strong language merely; even old Rowland Hill used to say "he grudged the Devil those rough and ready words." "I walked to that delightful place Craky-hall with a delightful young man beloved by all his friends espacially by me his loveress, but I must not talk any more about him for Isa said it is not proper for to speak of gentalmen but I will never forget him!... I am very very glad that satan has not given me boils and many other misfortunes—In the holy bible these words are written that the Devil goes like a roaring lyon in search of his pray but the lord lets us escape from him but we" (pauvre petite!) "do not strive with this awfull Spirit.... To-day I pronunced a word which should never come out of a lady\'s lips it was that I called John a Impudent Bitch. I will tell you what I think made me in so bad a humor is I got one or two of that bad bad sina (senna) tea to-day,"—a better excuse for bad humor and bad language than most.

She has been reading the Book of Esther: "It was a dreadful thing that Haman was hanged on the very gallows which he had prepared for Mordeca to hang him and his ten sons thereon and it was very wrong and cruel to hang his sons for they did not commit the crime; but then Jesus was not then come to teach us to be merciful." This is wise and beautiful,—has upon it the very dew of youth and of holiness. Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings He perfects His praise.

"This is Saturday and I am very glad of it because I have play half the Day and I get money too but alas I owe Isabella 4 pence for I am finned 2 pence whenever I bite my nails. Isabella is teaching me to make simme colings nots of interrigations peorids commoes, etc.... As this is Sunday I will meditate upon Senciable and Religious subjects. First I should be very thankful I am not a begger."

This amount of meditation and thankfulness seems to have been all she was able for.

"I am going to-morrow to a delightfull place, Braehead by name, belonging to Mrs. Crraford, where there is ducks cocks hens bubblyjocks 2 dogs 2 cats and swine which is delightful. I think it is shocking to think that the dog and cat should bear them" (this is a meditation physiological), "and they are drowned after all. I would rather have a man-dog than a woman-dog, because they do not bear like women-dogs; it is a hard case—it is shocking. I cam here to enjoy natures delightful breath it is sweeter than a fial (phial) of rose oil."

Braehead is the farm the historical Jock Howison asked and got from our gay James the Fifth, "the gudeman o\' Ballengiech," as a reward for the services of his flail, when the King had the worst of it at Cramond Brig with the gypsies. The farm is unchanged in size from that time, and still in the unbroken line of the ready and victorious thrasher. Braehead is held on the condition of the possessor being ready to present the King with a ewer and basin to wash his hands, Jock having done this for his unknown king after the splore, and when George the Fourth came to Edinburgh this ceremony was performed in silver at Holyrood. It is a lovely neuk this Braehead, preserved almost as it was 200 years ago. "Lot and his wife," mentioned by Maidie,—two quaintly cropped yew-trees,—still thrive, the burn runs as it did in her time, and sings the same quiet tune,—as much the same and as different as Now and Then. The house full of old family relics and pictures, the sun shining on them through the small deep windows with their plate glass; and there, blinking at the sun, and chattering contentedly, is a parrot, that might, for its looks of eld, have been in the ark, and domineered over and deaved the dove. Everything about the place is old and fresh.

This is beautiful: "I am very sorry to say that I forgot God—that is to say I forgot to pray to-day and Isabella told me that I should be thankful that God did not forget me—if he did, O what would become of me if I was in danger and God not friends with me—I must go to unquenchable fire and if I was tempted to sin—how could I resist it O no I will never do it again—no no—if I can help it!" (Canny wee wifie!) "My religion is greatly falling off because I dont pray with so much attention when I am saying my prayers, and my charecter is lost among the Braehead people. I hope I will be religious again—but as for regaining my charecter I despare for it." (Poor little "habit and repute"!)

Her temper, her passion, and her "badness" are almost daily confessed and deplored: "I will never again trust to my own power, for I see that I cannot be good without God\'s assistance,—I will not trust in my own selfe, and Isa\'s health will be quite ruined by me,—it will indeed." "Isa has giving me advice, which is, that when I feal Satan beginning to tempt me, that I flea him and he would flea me." "Remorse is the worst thing to bear, and I am afraid that I will fall a marter to it."

Poor dear little sinner! Here comes the world again: "In my travels I met with a handsome lad named Charles Balfour Esq., and from him I got ofers of marage—offers of marage, did I say? Nay plenty heard me." A fine scent for "breach of promise"!