the ears of Scottish children, and to
him, in view of his experience, must have found a special directness of
address. But if he had no fine sense of poetry in letters, he felt with
a deep joy the poetry of life. You should have heard him speak of what
he loved; of the tent pitched beside the talking water; of the stars
overhead at night; of the blest return of morning, the peep of day over
the moors, the awaking birds among the birches; how he abhorred the long
winter shut in cities; and with what delight, at the return of the
spring, he once more pitched his camp in the living out-of-doors. But we
were a pair of tramps; and to you, who are doubtless sedentary and a
consistent first-class passenger in life, he would scarce have laid
himself so open;--to you, he might have been content to tell his story
of a ghost--that of a buccaneer with his pistols as he lived--whom he
had once encountered in a seaside cave near Buckie; and that would have
been enough, for that would have shown you the mettle of the man. Here
was a piece of experience solidly and livingly built up in words, here
was a story created, _teres atque rotundus_.

And to think of the old soldier, that lover of the literary bards! He
had visited stranger spots than any seaside cave; encountered men more
terrible than any spirit; done and dared and suffered in that
incredible, unsung epic of the Mutiny War; played his part with the
field force of Delhi, beleaguering and beleaguered; shared in that
enduring, savage anger and contempt of death and decency that, for long
months together, bedevil'd and inspired the army; was hurled to and fro
in the battle-smoke of the assault; was there, perhaps, where Nicholson
fell; was there when the attacking column, with hell upon every side,
found the soldier's enemy--strong drink, and the lives of tens of
thousands trembled in the scale, and the fate of the flag of England
staggered. And of all this he had no more to say than "hot work, sir,"
or "the army suffered a great deal, sir," or, "I believe General Wilson,
sir, was not very highly thought of in the papers." His life was naught
to him, the vivid pages of experience quite blank: in words his pleasure
lay--melodious, agitated words--printed words, about that which he had
never seen and was connatally incapable of comprehending. We have here
two temperaments face to face; both untrained, unsophisticated,
surprised (we may say) in the egg; both boldly charactered:--tha