240 JOHN DUNCAN, WEAVER AND BOTANIST. 



Mr. Smith gratefully recalls John's kindly interest in 

 himself, while he lived at home and after he left it for his 

 first situation at Cothal Mills. There John walked twenty 

 miles to see him. He also took him on a first visit to 

 Aberdeen, to show him the " fairlies " there. On the way 

 thither on foot, he delighted the young man's heart by his 

 sincere and childlike sympathy with his own ecstatic 

 raptures at his first view of the sea from near Woodside. 



The crowded and miscellaneous kitchen in Sandy 

 Smith's home was scarcely a place for a student to spend 

 his spare time in. This forced John to seek quieter and 

 more congenial quarters. Retiring as he was, he found 

 in Auchleven kindly appreciators who understood and 

 respected him, especially amongst the intelligent women 

 he knew. 



Just opposite the weaving shop and face to face with it 

 on the other side of the road, stood the workshop and 

 dwelling of Emslie, the village carpenter. He was himself 

 a quiet man, with no pretensions to mental parts, doing his 

 daily work with diligence, though varying it occasionally 

 with a quiet scamper, gun in hand, over the moors and 

 mosses of Benachie. His wife was an active woman of 

 great intelligence, kind and neighbourly. She was a 

 diligent reader and good talker, and had an excellent 

 memory, which now in her old age is full of vivid recol- 

 lections of the Auchleven of the time and the strange 

 weaver. Her intelligence is well indicated by the fact, 

 that the Mutual Instruction Class, of which more anon, 

 used often to meet in her house before they got a proper 

 room, and that she used to enjoy the papers read and the 

 discussions that followed. 



