ANN STKEET. 199 



Faults of temper and intolerance sometimes glared forth, finding 

 utterance, it might be, both violent and unreasonable. Thus his 

 highly-strung nervous organization made him keenly alive to all 

 outward impressions, loud laughter, sudden noises, rudeness, affec- 

 tation, and those offences against minor morals that are generally 

 regarded with indifference or passing disgust, affected him painfully; 

 and if but for a short time exposed to any such annoyances, no self- 

 control prevented him from giving expression to his feelings. But 

 such outbursts, whether manifested in spoken or written words, 

 were as summer storms, that leave the air purer and the sky brighter 

 than before. He was, in fact, too large a man to be unamiable. 

 His natural temper was, in mature life, as it had been in boyhood 

 and youth, sweet and sunny, and, with all his enjoyment of activity 

 and excitement, he never liked any company half so well as that 

 which he found at his own fireside. To that quiet and simple home, 

 in which his happiness was summed up, we now turn for a short 

 time. 



Towards the end of the winter of 1819, my father, with his wife 

 and children, now five in number, two boys and three girls,* left 

 his mother's house, 53 Queen street, and set up his household gods 

 in a small and somewhat inconvenient house in Ann street (No. 20). 

 This little street, which forms the culminating point of the suburb 

 of Stockbridge, was at that time quite " out of town," and is still 

 a secluded place, overshadowed by the tall houses of Eton terrace 

 and Clarendon Crescent. In the literary " Ledger," already referred 

 to, which contains all sorts of memoranda in my father's handwriting, 

 there is a page taken up with an estimate of the cost of furniture 

 for dining-room, sitting-room, nursery, servants' room, and kitchen, 

 making up a total of £195, with the triumphant query at the end, 

 in a bold hand, "Could it be less ?" Truly, I think not. This little 

 entry throws an interesting light on the circumstances of this de- 

 voted pair, who, eight years previously, bad started in life so dif- 

 ferently under the prosperous roof-tree of Elleray. But the limita- 

 tion of their resources had, from the beginning, brought with it 

 neither regret nor despondency, and now that they were for the 

 first time fairly facing the cares of life, they took up the burden 

 with hope and cheerfulness. My father felt strong in his own pow- 



* Their names, in the order of their ages, were as follows: — John, born April, 1312; Margaret. 

 July, 1813; Mar}-, August, 1814; Blair, April, 1816; Jane Emily, January, 1817. 



