Stephp]nson: The Ettrick Shepherd 



61 



ray may debit me with it as cheap as you like. . . . We have no 

 post nor any carrier from this, and I neither know how nor when I am 

 to get this letter carried. 



I take the half of my last sheet of paper to write to you a few lines, 

 and implore you not to insist on my coming to town just yet. Believe 

 me, you do not know what you ask. It is cruel in the extreme. Can 

 I leave my fine house, my gray-hounds, my curling-stones, my silver 

 punch-bowl and mug, my country friends, my sister and my sweetheart, 

 to come and plunge into general dissipation? And, worst of all, can 

 I leave home, a house made by my own hand, and the most snug and 

 comfortable, perhaps, that ever was made, to be a lodger in the house 

 of another, my own ingle-cheek, dish and night-gown, v/ith my parents 

 [waiting] assiduously on me — only to be a pest to others or to pay 

 horridly for lodgings and keep the same establishment at home? I know 

 it is all kindness and affection in you; but they are misdirected, for 

 everyone who wishes me to spend my life happily would wish me to 

 spend it at home. Besides, I cannot take my hand in managing the 

 publication, or pushing the sale of my own works. If delicacy even 

 permitted it, I am the worst hand in the world to do such a thing. 

 Further than the proofs I can do nothing. You are right. The maga- 

 zine is a most excellent one. 



The rains have been prodigious. Ettrick and Yarrow have almost 

 laid their banks waste. I built a small mn on my farm last year, that 

 everybody who v/as thirsty might get a drink when he liked. About 

 midnight on the 2d, the man who keeps it was alarmed by a rushing 

 sound as of many waters, but as the Yarrow^ runs at a distance of a 

 quarter of a mile, he laid him down again. In a few minutes after, 

 the waves began to break over the bedclothes in good earnest, on which 

 he sprang up and carried out all his family, one by one, in water to 

 the neck, and they escaped naked and in great dismay to my farm- 

 house of Mount Benger. No lives were lost but the cat's. She was 

 found drowned on the floor next day. 



After five years of residence at Altrive, Hogg was married 

 to Margaret Phillips. As much as ten years before this time, 

 Hogg had met Miss Phillips at the house of his friend Mr. 

 James Gray of Edinburgh, whose first wife was Margaret 

 Phillips' sister. A mutual attachment grew up between the 

 two which, however, did not ripen into love till the more set- 

 tled circumstances of Hogg's condition that followed his 

 settlement at Altrive. The story of this period of the Shep- 

 herd's life has been written for the public only by his daughter 

 in her Memoir. The reader is referred to that volume, which 

 is again in print and therefore easily accessible. Much of his 

 correspondence relating to this period is there reproduced. 

 Writes Mrs. Garden: 



