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their good name, though thus nurtured without the 

 advantages of a virtuous home. They would seem to have 

 been truly attached to their father, and letters still exist 

 from both of them, addressed to him by his affectionate 

 daughters, which prove the pleasant relations that subsisted 

 between them. The fact that they could use the pen so 

 creditably as they did, shows that their education had not 

 been neglected. 



The eldest, Mary, was a good-looking brunette, " a gae 

 setting sort o' lassie," as they say in Aberdeenshire, and her 

 father's favourite. For years, she drove a milk-cart into 

 Aberdeen, selling her master's milk, and being much liked 

 for her pleasant, cheerful manners. She at last married a 

 shoemaker called Smart, in Aberdeen, where they lived long 

 in the Gallowgate, and where her father used to visit them. 



The younger, Elizabeth, married John Cormack, who 

 made his living by travelling over the country, selling 

 broom and heather besoms and other articles of natural 

 produce, and who was hence universally known as " besom 

 Jock," or " heather Jock." This man was somewhat of a 

 character, a great humorist, and an inveterate talker ; but 

 he was an honest man even in public repute a rare merit 

 in such a life and was generally respected. His wife 

 becomi-ng paralyzed, like her mother, Cormack got a 

 " coach," or hand-carriage for her, in which she used to sit 

 along with the 4 articles he sold, and in which she was driven 

 by him ungrudgingly all over the country. This single 

 fact reveals a volume of kindliness in the man, which in the 

 whole circumstances is almost poetic in its tenderness, for 

 he was, as everybody acknowledged, " partik'lar gweed " 

 to his helpless mate. 



