274 JOHN DUNCAN, WEAVER AND BOTANIST. 



into it. The whole is correctly spelled except one or two 

 words. It runs thus : 



" Rise up, my love, my beautiful one, and come away. 

 For the winter is past, the spring is come, and[the summer is 

 at hand, and the flowers appear on the earth, and the time 

 of the singing of birds is heard in our land. . . . For 

 thy love is better than gold, yea, much fine gold to be 

 desired are.* . . . For thou hast loved me with kindness and 

 tenderness. . . . Arise, my love, my fair one, and come 

 away ; for I will cheer you with joy and with gladness. 



" For who can find a virtuous wife ? for her price is 

 far above rubies. . . . She will do him good and not evil, 

 ail the days of her life. 



"It was by Providence intended that our pains and 

 pleasures should be blended.f 



" ' We smile to-day, to-morrow mourn, 

 Nor find a rose without a thorn.' " 



There at once spoke the lover, the theologian and the 

 naturalist, the astronomer, the predestinarian Calvinist and 

 the poet ; though the concluding couplet has in it more 

 rhyming truth than tact. But even this glowing epistle 

 was not successful. 



One of his fancies became a housekeeper in the parish 

 of Tough, at a farm he used to visit. Though John was 

 warm and persistent, and, as the folks said, " really daft 

 aboot 5 er," she was cold and practical and cared for none of 

 these things, at least in John's person. Some of his kindly 

 friends tried, in a left-handed way, to favour his suit, and 



* The latter part of the sentence is a quotation from the Scotch 

 metrical psalms (19. v. 10), which accounts for the incorrect grammar. 



t This sentence may be a rhyming couplet, though not so written 

 by John. 



