and though timid for anticipated danger as any woman, _in_ it he
was without fear.

One more illustration of his character in connection with his riding. On
coming to Edinburgh he gave up this kind of exercise; he had no occasion
for it, and he had enough, and more than enough of excitement in the
public questions in which he found himself involved, and in the
miscellaneous activities of a popular town minister. I was then a young
doctor--it must have been about 1840--and had a patient, Mrs. James
Robertson, eldest daughter of Mr. Pirie, the predecessor of Dr. Dick in
what was then Shuttle Street congregation, Glasgow. She was one of my
father's earliest and dearest friends,--a mother in the Burgher Israel,
she and her cordial husband "given to hospitality," especially to "the
Prophets." She was hopelessly ill at Juniper Green, near Edinburgh. Mr.
George Stone, then living at Muirhouse, one of my father's congregation
in Broughton Place, a man of equal originality and worth, and devoted to
his minister, knowing my love of riding, offered me his blood-chestnut
to ride out and make my visit. My father said, "John, if you are going,
I would like to ride out with you;" he wished to see his dying friend.
"You ride!" said Mr. Stone, who was a very Yorkshireman in the matter of
horses. "Let him try," said I. The upshot was, that Mr. Stone sent the
chestnut for me, and a sedate pony--called, if I forget not,
Goliath--for his minister, with all sorts of injunctions to me to keep
him off the thorough-bred, and on Goliath.

My father had not been on a horse for nearly twenty years. He mounted
and rode off. He soon got teased with the short, pattering steps of
Goliath, and looked wistfully up at me, and longingly to the tall
chestnut, stepping once for Goliath's twice, like the Don striding
beside Sancho. I saw what he was after, and when past the toll he said
in a mild sort of way, "John, did you promise _absolutely_ I was not to
ride your horse?" "No, father, certainly not. Mr. Stone, I daresay,
wished me to do so, but I didn't." "Well then, I think we'll change;
this beast shakes me." So we changed. I remember how noble he looked;
how at home: his white hair and his dark eyes, his erect, easy,
accustomed seat. He soon let his eager horse slip gently away. It was
first _evasit_, he was off, Goliath and I jogging on behind; then
_erupit_, and in a twinkling--_evanuit_. I saw them last flashing
through the arch under the Canal, hi