e plan. Without any gammon, I am much more
happy than ever even in my day-dreams I ventured to imagine I might
be. It is not only me that my wife pleases, but she has gained
golden opinions from most of the people who have met her among my
friends and acquaintances in Scotland and China. My parents were
scared one day last year by receiving a letter from a lady in
England, a lady whose name even they had not known before, stating
that her daughter had decided to become _my wife_. Didn't it stir
up the old people! They had never heard a word about it! My letter
to them, posted at the same time with the proposal, had been
delayed in London. The young lady went to Scotland, and was with
them two weeks, and came away having made such an impression on
them that they wrote me from home to say that "though I had
searched the country for a couple of years I could not have made a
better choice."

'Perhaps I am tiring you, but I want to let you know all about it,
and to assure you that you need not be the least shy of me or of my
English wife. She is a good lassie, any quantity better than me,
and just as handy as a Scotch lass would have been. It was great
fun for her to read your tirade about English wives and your
warning about her. She is a jolly kind of body, and does not take
offence, but I guess if she comes across you she will wake you up a
bit.'

The other letter was to Miss Bremner, and referred to the part Gilmour
was to take in her marriage in 1883 to his brother Alexander:--

'Now as to your affair, a much more serious matter. Alex has said
something about my part. I want to take part, but only such a small
part as will make it true to say, "assisted by the brother of the
bridegroom." It is for you and Dr. Macfadyen to say what that
_small_ part shall be; all I have to say about it, the smaller the
better.

'My experiences of the ceremonies of social Christianity have been
mixed a little. In England I baptised a child by a wrong name, and
had actually to do it again. In China on a similar occasion I began
by saying, "Friends, God has given you this child," when the
seeming father stopped me, and explained that God had not given
them this child, but he himself had picked it up in a field where
it had been exposed.

'I think I married o