pense of a ninepenny postage. And then, with, I fear, a
very inadequate sense of the responsibilities of my new office, I stayed
away from the Council board, and did nothing whatever in its behalf,
with astonishing perseverance and success, for three years together. And
thus began and terminated my municipal career--a career which, I must
confess, failed to secure for me the thanks of my constituency; but
then, on the other hand, I am not aware that the worthy people ever
seriously complained. There was absolutely nothing to do in the
councilship; and, unlike some of my brother office-bearers, the
requisite nothing I did, quietly and considerately, and very much at my
leisure, without any unnecessary display of stump-oratory, or of
anything else.

CHAPTER XXIII.

"Days passed; an' now my patient steps
That maiden's walks attend;
My vows had reach'd that maiden's ear,
Ay, an' she ca'd me friend.
An' I was bless'd as bless'd can be;
The fond, daft dreamer Hope
Ne'er dream'd o' happier days than mine,
Or joys o' ampler scope."--HENRISON'S SANG.

I used, as I have said, to have occasional visitors when working in the
churchyard. My minister has stood beside me for hours together,
discussing every sort of subject, from the misdeeds of the Moderate
divines--whom he liked all the worse for being brethren of his own
cloth--to the views of Isaac Taylor on the corruptions of Christianity
or the possibilities of the future state. Strangers, too, occasionally
came the way, desirous of being introduced to the natural curiosities of
the district, more especially to its geology; and I remember first
meeting in the churchyard, in this way, the late Sir Thomas Dick Lauder;
and of having the opportunity afforded me of questioning, mallet in
hand, the present distinguished Professor of Humanity in the Edinburgh
University,[15] respecting the nature of the cohesive agent in the
non-calcareous sandstone which I was engaged in hewing. I had sometimes
a different, but not less interesting, class of visitors. The town had
its small but very choice circle of accomplished intellectual ladies,
who, earlier in the century, would have been perhaps described as
members of the blue-stocking sisterhood; but the advancing intelligence
of the age had rendered the phrase obsolete; and they simply took their
place as well-informed, sensible women, whose acquaintance with the best
authors was regarded a