IN carlyle's country 67 



I had less trouble to get the opinion of an old 

 road-mender whom I fell in with one day. I was 

 walking toward Repentance Hill, when he overtook 

 me with his " machine " (all road vehicles in Scot- 

 land are called machines), and insisted upon my 

 getting up beside him. He had a little white 

 pony, "twenty-one years old, sir," and a heavy, 

 rattling two-wheeler, quite as old I should say. 

 We discoursed about roads. Had we good roads in 

 America? No? Had we no "metal" there, no 

 stone? Plenty of it, I told him, — too much; but 

 we had not learned the art of road-making yet. 

 Then he would have to come "out" and show us; 

 indeed, he had been seriously thinking about it; he 

 had an uncle in America, but had lost all track of 

 him. He had seen Carlyle many a time, "but the 

 people here took no interest in that man," he said; 

 "he never done nothing for this place." Referring 

 to Carlyle's ancestors, he said, "The Cairls were 

 what we Scotch call bullies, — a set of bullies, sir. 

 If you crossed their path, they would murder you ; " 

 and then came out some highly- colored tradition of 

 the "Ecclefechan dog fight," which Carlyle refers 

 to in his Reminiscences. On this occasion, the old 

 road-mender said, the * * Cairls ' ' had clubbed to- 

 gether, and bullied and murdered half the people 

 of the place! "No, sir, we take no interest in that 

 man here, " and he gave the pony a sharp punch with 

 his stub of a whip. But he himself took a friendly 

 interest in the schoolgirls whom we overtook along 

 the road, and kept picking them up till the cart was 



