24 THE PORTRAIT GALLERY 
ARCHITECT OF OUR TEMPLE 
6. Richest in associations with those noble husbandmen of the 
half-century agone lives RoBERT Burns OciLviE, master of Blair- 
gowrie, and spiritual progenitor of the gallery whose tales these 
pages bear. Since first he glimpsed the concept of the stockman’s 
shrine, his pulses have daily quickened to its service and upbuild- 
ing. He it is, of all the throng with pastoral ideals, whose memo- 
ries have fruited full; his dearest wish has been to find horizons 
which the romance of the husbandman has not yet reached, and 
through the message of these worthy souls give vision of the 
artistry of herds and flocks. From Scottish forebears he has 
gained the flavor of the land, the wind-swept slopes of pastured 
hills have given him command of herder thought. Idyl of pedi- 
gree and blood, of show yard stress, find lodgment in his heart, 
and day by day, inspire anew fresh goals for rural youth. 
The blood of Forfarshire and Fife runs in his veins. Before 
his birth his parents crossed to Whitby, Canada, and settled near 
the site of modern Ashburne. From every viewpoint the family 
was pioneer, and the common school instead of giving him the 
training for his busy life, opened new fields of thought wherein 
the world’s masters had traveled, the realm of books. He has 
been a voluminous and careful reader, and though necessity early 
forced him into the mercantile world, the stored knowledge of 
nearly six decades finds ready access to his tongue, and faultless 
memory can trace it to its source. While still in his teens he 
crossed from Ontario to Wisconsin, and in 1867 settled in Madi- 
son. Employment was found in a dry goods store, and three 
years later the foreclosers of a mortgage on the business placed 
him in charge. One year proved him sufficiently a master to 
cause the creditors of his first employer to sell the business to 
him. Five years more saw him the owner of one of the leading 
dry goods stores in Wisconsin. 
