outbreak of cholera
in India and at home. Of the town and the man Mr Stevenson gives a
graphic picture in _Random Memories_, when describing a visit to the
Fife coast, where his father was making an inspection of lights and
harbours.

In 1849 when home on leave Dr Balfour volunteered to go to Davidson's
Mains, in the parish of Cramond, where as a specialist in cholera
symptoms he was amazed to find the outbreak as virulent and as fatal as
the Asiatic cholera he had seen in India. In 1866, when another wave of
cholera swept over Britain, he was asked to go to Slateford, where he
coped with its ravages almost single-handed, saving life in every case
after he went, except those already too far gone before his arrival. In
late autumn of the same year the scourge broke out seriously in the
small towns on the coast of Fife, and Dr Balfour went to Leven, where
the doctor had just died of it, and a state of panic prevailed, and
there too he succeeded in quickly stamping it out.

Having retired from his Indian appointment he felt idle time hang heavy
on hand, so he acceded to the request of the inhabitants and went to
Leven to take up practice there. His wife, who was a cousin of his own,
and their four children, shortly after followed him from Edinburgh, and
he built a house called 'The Turret' there, where he remained until his
greatly lamented death in 1887.

There from childhood I grew up in intimate friendship with the young
Balfours, and went out and in to the doctor's house, receiving in it
such kindness from parents and children that it was regarded by me as a
second home, and its inmates were looked upon as one's 'ain folk.' As
one's 'ain folk,' too, by-and-bye, were regarded those other Balfour
families, notably Dr George W. Balfour's household and Miss Balfour, and
the nephews and nieces who had their home with her--who made of the
little Fife town their holiday resort. Later an Edinburgh school and
long visits to Edinburgh relatives made the Scotch capital as familiar
to me as Fife; and then the Stevenson family in their home at Heriot Row
were added to the little circle of friends, now, alas! so thinned by
grievous blanks. Old and young have passed into 'The Silent Land,' and
life is infinitely the poorer for those severed friendships--those lost
regards of early days.

Not a few of the old folk were notable in their time, some of the
younger generation have made, or mean to make, some stir in the world.
But r