MARCH 75 



common interest and occupation have given us some 

 insight, obliterating distinction of rank and disparity of 

 income. It is in the field, in the forest, by the river-side, 

 that one realises best that 



' The rank is but the guinea stamp, 

 The man 's the gowd for a' that.' 



The Dictionary of National Biography fills between 

 sixty and seventy octavo volumes, and never a paragraph 

 in that mighty work has been spared for Tom Purdie. 

 Yet who was uppermost in Sir Walter Scott's thoughts 

 when the flood of his troubles burst upon him in the 

 dark winter of 1825 ? 



' A bitter thought,' he jotted in his diary, ' but if tears start 

 at it, let them flow. My heart clings to the place I have 

 created. There is scarce a tree on it that does not owe its 

 being to me. . . . Poor Will Laidlaw poor Tom Purdie such 

 news will wring your hearts, and many a poor fellow besides to 

 whom my prosperity was daily bread.' 



And then, four years later, when Tom's honest heart had 

 ceased to beat, 'I have lost my faithful servant my 

 factotum and am so much shocked that I really wish 

 to be quit of the country and safe in town.' 



Few writers ever have equalled, none has excelled, 

 William Scrope in describing field sports. He had the 

 discretion to publish but twice The Art of Deerstalking 

 and Days and Nights of Salmon Fishing but these are 

 books in a thousand, books which, like Alexandre Dumas' 

 novels, one may read again and again with undiininished 

 zest. Yet if you analyse their charm, you will find that 

 it would vanish if the sayings and doings of stalkers and 



