es. My aggregate of paying hearers was about sixteen thousand,
the bulk being old book-likers. The gain was nearly four times as much
as the cost, good hospitality having been the rule." "I read publicly
(private readings additional, as often asked after dinners, &c.)
twenty-nine proverbial essays and thirty-eight poems; repeated according
to popularity by request to two hundred." I only do not name some of my
generous Scotch and English hosts for fear of seeming to have forgotten
others by omission; and the list is too lengthy for full insertion; as
also is the long story of my adventures and experiences in the
hospitable North.

Miscellaneous Poems.

Before dismissing thus curtly, my great Scottish exploit (which, by the
way, anticipated by three years my second American visit, but I would
not disjoin that from my first) I ought to give some account of the
publication of my Miscellaneous Poems by Gall & Inglis at Edinburgh, and
of some few of the hospitalities connected therewith, though not
revealing domesticities, as against my wholesome rule.

An odd thing happened to me at Mr. Inglis's dinner-table, where I met
several literary celebrities. I had just read, and was loud in my
praises of a then anonymous work, "Primeval Man Unveiled," and I asked
my neighbour, an aged man, if he knew that extraordinary book?
Whereupon the whole table saluted the questioner with a loud guffaw; for
I was speaking to its author, whom I had innocently so bepraised.
However, my mistake was easily forgiven, as may be imagined. I found
that the said author was Mr. Inglis's near relative, Mr. Gall,--so my
new publisher and I were immediately _en rapport_.

There are two simultaneous editions of this book of my poetry--one
called the Redlined and the other the Landscape; the first on thick
paper, and with eight steel engravings, the latter having every page
decorated in colours with beautiful borderings of scenery. The volume
contains about one-half or less of all the mass of lyrics I have
written, some of the pieces having been in earlier books of my poetry,
as Ballads and Poems, Cithara, Lyrics of the Heart and Mind, Hactenus, A
Thousand Lines, &c. &c.; and they date, though not printed in systematic
order, from my fifteenth year to beyond my sixtieth. Fly-leaf lyrics
have been continually growing ever since now to my seventy-sixth.

Here are a few further random, extracts from my Scotch
diary:--"Arbroath, _Sunday, Nov. 2, 1873_.--