IN carlyle's country 47 



singing bout, open to competition to all of Scot- 

 land. I told his mother, who also had a voice of 

 wonderful sweetness, that such a gift would make 

 her son's fortune anywhere, and found that the 

 subject was the cause of much anxiety to her. She 

 feared lest it should be the ruination of him — lest 

 he should prostitute it to the service of the devil, 

 as she put it, rather than use it to the glory of 

 God. She said she had rather follow him to his 

 grave than see him in the opera or concert hall, 

 singing for money. She wanted him to stick to 

 his work, and use his voice only as a pious and 

 sacred gift. When I asked the young man to come 

 and sing for us at the hotel, the mother was greatly 

 troubled, as she afterward told me, till she learned 

 we were stopping at a temperance house. But the 

 young man seemed not at all inclined to break away 

 from the advice of his mother. The other son had 

 a sweetheart who had gone to America, and he was 

 looking longingly thitherward. He showed me her 

 picture, and did not at all attempt to conceal from 

 me, or from his family, his interest in the original. 

 Indeed, one would have said there were no secrets 

 or concealments in such a family, and the thorough 

 unaifected piety of the whole household, mingled 

 with so much that was human and racy and canny, 

 made an impression upon me I shall not soon for- 

 get. This family was probably an exceptional one, 

 but it tinges all my recollections of smoky, tall- 

 chimneyed Glasgow. 



A Scotch trait of quite another sort, and more 



