FAME, PAUPERISM AND WEAKNESS. 403 



do anything except to beg to win an honest penny ! But 

 the evident unfitness and weakness of the tottering old 

 man, in his eightieth year, of course made his application 

 unsuccessful. 



As a friend, speaking of this incident, remarks, his 

 willingness to do the hard work connected with a sawmill 

 4f illustrates, in a telling manner, his grand old spirit of 

 Scottish independence. Would even Burns," he asks, 

 " had he lived to John's age with all its infirmities, have 

 had the resolution to tramp to the sawmill and ask for 

 work ? " 



In 1873, so low were his circumstances, with present 

 needs and increasing frailties, and so sad and down-hearted 

 did he become in the darker prospects before him, that the 

 old man took to bed, sick with melancholy heart-ache, for 

 the first time in his life losing hope amidst the gathering 

 blackness. What a new meaning did that childlike and 

 trustful petition in the model prayer of our childhood 

 possess now to John in his age and want " Give us this 

 day our daily bread ! " And what a new but inexorable 

 commentary on God's only method of answering all such 

 prayers, did his darkening prospects afford ! 



How unutterably bitter and heart-sore must have been 

 the hours then spent by that keen, sensitive, silent, pious 

 and proud old man, in that dark, cold bed on the rafters 

 under the thatch of the solitary workshop, with the fire 

 extinguished on his hearth in the cheerless November, and 

 the flame of hope only flickering on its dying embers in his 

 heart alone in the world in that desolate hut, widowed and 

 childless, bread even denied him, strength departing when 

 most needed, and God seemingly deserting him in his old 



