IN CARLYLE'S COUNTRY. 53 



singing bout, open to competition to all of Scotland, 

 I told his mother, who also had a voice of wonderful 

 sweetness, that such a gift would make her son's for. 

 tune 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 pros- 

 titute 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 temper- 

 ance 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 unaffected piety of the whole house- 

 hold, mingled with so much that was human and 

 racy and canny, made an impression upon me I shall 

 not soon forget. This family was probably an ex- 

 ceptional one, but it tinges all my recollections of 

 emoky, tall-chimneyed Glasgow. 



A Scotch trait of quite another sort, and more sug 



