IN CAKLYLE'S COUNTRY 61 



half mournful gaze; the ground was hallowed be- 

 hind him ; his dead called to him from their graves. 

 Nothing deepens and intensifies family traits like 

 poverty and toil and suffering. It is the furnace 

 heat that brings out the characters, the pressure 

 that makes the strata perfect. One recalls Carlyle's 

 grandmother getting her children up late at night, 

 his father one of them, to break their long fast with 

 oaten cakes from the meal that had but just arrived; 

 making the fire from straw taken from their beds. 

 Surely, such things reach the springs of being. 



It seemed eminently fit that Carlyle's dust should 

 rest here in his native soil, with that of his kin- 

 dred, he was so thoroughly one of them, and that 

 his place should be next his mother's, between 

 whom and himself there existed such strong affec- 

 tion. I recall a little glimpse he gives of his 

 mother in a letter to his brother John, while the 

 latter was studying in Germany. His mother had 

 visited him in Edinburgh. "I had her," he writes, 

 "at the pier of Leith, and showed her where your 

 ship vanished; and she looked over the blue waters 

 eastward with wettish eyes, and asked the dumb 

 waves ' when he would be back again. ' Good 

 mother." 



To see more of Ecclefechan and its people, and 

 to browse more at my leisure about the country, I 

 brought my wife and youngster down from Lockerbie ; 

 and we spent several days there, putting up at the 

 quiet and cleanly little Bush Inn. I tramped much 

 about the neighborhood, noting the birds, the wild 



