500 JOHN DUNCAN, WEAVER AND BOTANIST. 



Could anything have surpassed the serene contentment 

 of Duncan's lot, and the genuine happiness he drew from 

 what would seem to most of us poor and meagre if not 

 quite inadequate elements ? Think of the poverty-stricken 

 conditions under which his whole life was spent, from his 

 branded birth in a lodging on Stonehaven pier to an 

 honoured tomb in Alford churchyard the hard and scanty 

 comforts his ceaseless but ill-requited toil afforded him all 

 his days ; his wrecked home from which he expected so> 

 much, and his living thenceforth by alien firesides, from 

 which he was often forced to seek refuge by quieter and 

 more comfortable hearths ; the astonishingly ill-lighted, 

 unventilated, ill-conditioned cribs in which from first to last 

 he had to sleep ; the ancient garments in which he was 

 obliged for the greater part of his life to clothe himself,, 

 making him an oddity and a wonder to his neighbours,, 

 from his sheer inability to renew them through want of the 

 requisite means. And then think of the deep and perennial 

 pleasures, the real riches of life, he was able to extract from 

 such unpromising and seemingly antagonistic elements ! It 

 argues in the man "a benign simplicity," a rare wisdom, 

 for which he is truly to be envied, and for which most men 

 would barter all they have. And his happiness did not 

 arise from dull, unfeeling acquiescence in these poor 

 materials, or from an incapacity of soul for higher things, 

 like the phlegmatic insensibility and low content of too many 

 of our poorer population. His spirit was keen, sensitive, 

 aggressive, unsatisfied with common husks, and filled with 

 a divine discontent that urged to higher things. 



What then was the source of this strange peace, what 

 the hidden spring of his felicity ? 



