156 



CHAPTER V. 



DISEASE LINES TO SISTER JEANIE 

 RENEWS HIS FRIENDSHIP WITH SWANSON AND CORRE- 

 SPONDS WITH ROSS WRITES AN ODE ON GREECE AND 

 OFFERS IT TO THE ' SCOTSMAN/ 



MILLER returned from Edinburgh in unbroken 

 spirits. Whatever the drawbacks of his Edinburgh 

 sojourn, he had never ceased to be happy, and his mood, 

 as we learn from an expression used in a letter to William 

 Ross, had commonly been that of exuberant gaiety. But 

 one circumstance connected with his work while at 

 Edinburgh now comes into view, to which it is impos- 

 sible to refer without mournfulness. While the young 

 journeyman, so brave of spirit, so modestly content with 

 his exile from the society he was fitted to adorn, was 

 cutting blocks into pillars in the shed at Niddrie, the 

 seeds of painful and ineradicable disease were being 

 sown in his constitution. The hardships of his appren- 

 ticeship had brought him to the gates of death, and 

 although he seemed to have recovered his strength, it is 

 probable that his lungs were of less than average vigour 

 when he entered as a journeyman upon the occupation 

 of stone-hewing. In two seasons he became so deeply 

 affected with ' the stone-cutter's malady/ that he had to 

 choose between throwing himself loose for a season from 



