HIS CHARACTERISTICS AND CHARACTER. 481 



though even then his manner belied his heart.* But this 

 reserve did not surprise Charles, who is infected with a 

 similar undemonstrative reticence, and hates everything 

 like " fracas." He knew, as he said, " John's very heart," 

 believed in and felt the reality, and the outward expression 

 in manner passed as nothing in his eyes, or as but the 

 bashfulness of a lover. Such men as John and Charles 

 are quite unable to express their feelings by external signs 

 of hand or habit, though they show it in the eye and in a 

 hundred silent ways ; thinking the sacredness of the heart as 

 desecrated when thus made "a public show of," as Charles 

 often says. In everything connected with the emotions, in- 

 cluding his religious feelings, John was, as a friend expresses 

 it, " undemonstrative, if not taciturn." Yet this external 

 coldness was only the upper soil, hiding a deep fountain 

 of feeling, that welled up at times even to tears. " Fre- 

 quently," writes the Rev. J. M. Shirreffs, his second minister 

 at the Milton of Cushnie, " he appeared to be much affected 

 in church, and I have often seen him quietly weeping there." 

 In walking with his friends, the same still reserve per- 

 vaded his action. "At these times," as James Black relates, 

 " we talked, in general, but little ; John ever busy amongst 

 the herbage, muttering names and properties, now plucking 

 a plant and putting a piece into his mouth to try its taste, 

 and then handing me a leaf or other part, say of Wood-sage, 

 with the remark, ' If that binna fale,t ca' ye me knotty- 

 stick ! ' It was bitter indeed, as I felt, and I could have 

 called him ' knotty ' out of spite. Then, in the ditch by 

 the roadside, he would talk to himself and me, calling out 



* See p. 363. 



t Also written .///, bitter, hot, biting ; used by Burns. 



2 I 



