personal friendship with the "gentleman farmer," so they
gave me his son's name, John _Gibson_; and the curly-haired child of the
cottage was soon able to toddle across to the mansion, and became a
great pet of the lady there. On my visit to Scotland in 1884 I drove out
to Braehead; but we found no cottage, nor trace of a cottage, and amused
ourselves by supposing that we could discover by the rising of the
grassy mound, the outline where the foundations once had been!

While yet a mere child, five years or so of age, my parents took me to a
new home in the ancient village of Torthorwald, about four and a quarter
miles from Dumfries, on the road to Lockerbie. At that time, say 1830,
Torthorwald was a busy and thriving village, and comparatively populous,
with its cottars and crofters, large farmers and small farmers, weavers
and shoemakers, doggers and coopers, blacksmiths and tailors. Fifty-five
years later, when I visited the scenes of my youth, the village proper
was extinct, except for five thatched cottages where the lingering
patriarchs were permitted to die slowly away,--soon they too would be
swept into the large farms, and their garden plots plowed over, like
sixty or seventy others that had been blotted out!

From the Bank Hill, close above our village, and accessible in a walk of
fifteen minutes, a view opens to the eye which, despite several easily
understood prejudices of mine that may discount any opinion that I
offer, still appears to me well worth seeing amongst all the beauties of
Scotland. At your feet lay a thriving village, every cottage sitting in
its own plot of garden, and sending up its blue cloud of "peat reek,"
which never somehow seemed to pollute the blessed air; and after all has
been said or sung, a beautifully situated village of healthy and happy
homes for God's children is surely the finest feature in every
landscape! Looking from the Bank Hill on a summer day, Dumfries with its
spires shone so conspicuous that you could have believed it not more
than two miles away; the splendid sweeping vale through which Nith rolls
to Solway, lay all before the naked eye, beautiful with village spires,
mansion houses, and white shining farms; the Galloway hills, gloomy and
far-tumbling, bounded the forward view, while to the left rose Criffel,
cloud-capped and majestic; then the white sands of Solway, with tides
swifter than horsemen; and finally the eye rested joyfully upon the
hills of Cumberland,