VISITS TO ABERDEEN FRIENDSHIP. 363, 



window-ledge of a large grocery. James stood beside him 

 like a standard-bearer, but with less dignity, his virtue fast 

 oozing out in spite of his inward calls to stand to duty and 

 prove to his fellows that he at least was not like other men ! 

 It was sufficiently trying to be ogled at as they trudged 

 along, but it became insupportable when a smiling crowd, 

 first of ruthless city arabs and then of older people, gathered 

 round them at the shop window. John himself was utterly 

 oblivious of the sensation he was causing, and it was with 

 very great difficulty, and only after frequent urgings, that 

 he was prevailed upon to rise. His martyrised friend accom- 

 panied him to Union Street, till, utterly beaten out with 

 his load and discomfited by his gathering feelings, he was 

 obliged to leave him, after seeing him fairly on his way. 

 James returned home a sadder and wiser man, determined 

 never to sacrifice himself in the same way again for even 

 the dearest friend ; and realising with new vividness, as he 

 says, how much human beings are but the creatures of 

 circumstances, and greatly how he, in particular, had been 

 cast very much in the common mould. In telling this 

 experience, he exclaims, \vith humorous truth 



" Breathes there the man with soul so dead," 



as not to take a red face under such circumstances ? Is 

 the reader one of these ? 



In 1864, John once more, and for the last time, met his 

 dearest friend. Charles had never seen him since 1849, 

 when they parted on the banks of the Gadie. He had since 

 then spent some time in Ayrshire, near Dairy, whence he 

 had removed, in 1858, to Arbigland on the Solway. After 

 years of longing, he succeeded, in 1864, in paying a hurried 



