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CHAPTER XIV. 



NEW OUTLOOK IN LIFE DIFFICULTIES OF PUBLICATION- 

 LETTERS TO MISS FRASER. 



THE quiet of intellectual luxury and philosophical 

 contentment broken up by the agitation of a more 

 genially inspiring hope, the pride of the stone-mason 

 who has been accepted as lover by a lady forbidding 

 him to place her in any position in which the world 

 might fail to recognize her for what she was, Miller 

 now looked anxiously round him for some means of 

 bettering his social status. He often thought of the 

 backwoods of America, but though the project of emi- 

 gration may have had some charms for his fancy, it 

 never laid hold on his heart. He may have seen himself 

 with the mind's eye, a brawny pioneer of civilisation, 

 making clear with stalwart arm and glowing forehead a 

 space in the primeval forest, to be occupied with field 

 and garden and homestead, and at moments there may 

 have been fascination in the view ; but his affections were 

 anchored in Scotland. His favourite idea, therefore, as 

 we saw in the preceding letter, was that he might under- 

 take the editorship of a Scottish newspaper. Some offer 

 of the kind reached him from Inverness, but he did not 

 consider it eligible. He shrank from the risk of depend- 

 ing for a livelihood upon promiscuous contribution to pe- 



