CORBIE HALL 
The March of Progress is, no doubt, a thing to be admired, 
and loving one’s fellow-men, no doubt one should rejoice in 
civilization, which brings all men more on an equality ; and 
doubtless, when we shall all live in mediocre one-brick- 
thick little red houses, with duplicate squares of garden, and 
the old mansions of the countryside have all been swept 
away to allow of the lands being equally divided, it will be 
very desirable, yet scarcely beautiful. Corbie Hall was 
one of these old mansions. It had been built by a Border 
Laird, whose habitation had been burnt over his wife’s head 
in the ’45, while he was away with Prince Charlie. The 
lady had escaped, and in later days, sitting by her fireside 
in her townhouse in Edinburgh, had been wont to tell how 
she had had the honour of dancing with the Prince in the 
halls of Holyrood, showing a dainty satin shoe once white 
in proof thereof. It was a grey stone house without portico, 
but with a large entrance-hall full of old pictures of 
beruffled knights and silken-clad ladies. In the old 
panelled drawing-room with its “ Adams ” ceiling there 
were bits of quaint old furniture — Chippendale or Sheraton — 
which would have delighted a connoisseur, while on the 
tables and mantelpiece were joys in china which modern 
care would have secured in glass cupboards for their value, 
but which were here allowed to remain freely exposed to the 
housemaid, that personage only less destructive than the ill- 
famed proverbial cat. The old Laird had made the Grand 
Tour in the days when folk travelled leisurely in their own 
carriages, instead of tearing over foreign lands at the tail of 
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