FRIENDSHIP AND COURTSHIP. 2/3 



feared that it would have required a very superior woman, 

 who looked far beneath the surface, to appreciate these, 

 allied with what the fair sex seem least able to tolerate in 

 a lover, eccentricity and oddness in personnel and habit, 

 as was decidedly true in John's case. 



But others had succeeded in more unlikely circumstances, 

 and why not he ? It is certain that his hopes were high, and 

 not easily daunted in love-making any more than in star- 

 gazing and plant-seeking. To a female friend of his who 

 esteemed him highly, he confided the important secret that 

 he had a lady-love. Thinking at the moment only of his 

 appearance in a woman's eye, she remarked, with plain 

 malapropos naivete but in real kindliness, that she was 

 glad to hear that anybody would take him ! John naturally 

 bridled up with wounded self-esteem and misplaced con- 

 fidence, and at once retorted with archness and vigour that, 

 as for that, he could get as mony lasses that wu'd be glad to 

 hae 'im as would stretch frae the Brig o' Dee to Benachie ! 



A love letter of John's, a gem in its way, lies before me, 

 sent in his fifty-sixth year, to an amiable and attractive 

 woman then in her thirtieth, who lived in the valley of the 

 Gadie. The date is the 25th of February, 1850 ; that is, be 

 it observed, St. Valentine's day, old style and a quainter, 

 more scriptural billet-doux has been rarely received, even at 

 that love-making season. The tender epistle is written in 

 his fairest hand, and evidently as slowly penned as in his 

 best copy-book at Paradise, upon pencil lines ruled with 

 due care, on a single sheet, now yellow with age. It bears a 

 printed ticket stuck at its head, containing the words 

 "A friend" above a mirror, intended, no doubt, as a sug- 

 gestive emblem of the fairness of the face that should gaze 



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