SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR'S LIFE. 19 



To lead the wanderer from the nest below ; 

 I love the sivuff of every out-field feather 

 By wood or stream, or 'mid the purple heather." 



With the balk of men engaged in manual occu- 

 pations, writing is irksome and slow work ; the fingers 

 are stiff, and the connexion between brain and pen- 

 holding is an awkward task. John Younger was an 

 exception to all this. He would beat his lapstone and 

 draw his thread all day, and betake himself for relief 

 to letter writing. His invariable plan was to make 

 his knees his writing desk, and in this uninviting 

 attitude the great bulk of his MS. was produced ; 

 not scrawled and blotched, but presented in a small 

 clear elegant penmanship, which in the case of a 

 self-taught workman is rarely met with. With 

 friends at a distance, men who had left St Boswells 

 for the broader field of adventure and pursuit which 

 it could not supply, or friends of a chance intimacy, 

 he maintained an extensive correspondence, making 

 his epistles so much the record of his careful thinking 

 that he took copies of them. In this way an im- 

 mense quantity of manuscript accumulated in the 

 course of years, significant of the ceaseless mental 

 activity which characterised him. At his death there 

 were more than seven hundred copies of letters 

 which he had addressed to friends. Many of these 

 had been written to men of literary eminence or 



