n come, oh my mother! come often to me,
An' soon an' for ever I'll come unto thee!

An' then, shrouded loveliness! soul-winning Jean,
How cold was thy hand on my bosom yestreen!
'Twas kind--for the love that your e'e kindled there
Will burn, ay an' burn, till that breast beat nae mair--
Our bairnies sleep round me, oh bless ye their sleep!
Your ain dark-eyed Willie will wauken and weep!
But blythe through his weepin', he'll tell me how you,
His heaven-hamed mammie, was dauting his brow.

Though dark be our dwellin', our happin' tho' bare,
And night closes round us in cauldness and care,
Affection will warm us--and bright are the beams
That halo our hame in yon dear land o' dreams:
Then weel may I welcome the night's deathly reign,
Wi' souls of the dearest I mingle me then;
The gowd light of morning is lightless to me,
But, oh for the night with its ghost revelrie!

But even more interesting than the poems themselves, is the
autobiographical account prefixed, with its vivid sketches of factory
life in Aberdeen, of the old regime of 1770; when "four days did the
weaver's work--Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, were of course jubilee. Lawn
frills gorged (?) freely from under the wrists of his fine blue gilt-
buttoned coat. He dusted his head with white flour on Sunday,
smirked and wore a cane; walked in clean slippers on Monday; Tuesday
heard him talk war bravado, quote Volney, and get drunk: weaving
commenced gradually on Wednesday. Then were little children pirn-
fillers, and such were taught to steal warily past the gate-keeper,
concealing the bottle. These wee smugglers had a drop for their
services, over and above their chances of profiting by the elegant
and edifying discussions uttered in their hearing. Infidelity was
then getting fashionable." But by the time Thom enters on his
seventeen years' weaving, in 1814, the Nemesis has come. "Wages are
six shillings a-week where they had been forty; but the weaver of
forty shillings, with money instead of wit, had bequeathed his vices
to the weaver of six shillings, with wit instead of money." The
introduction of machinery works evil rather than good, on account of
the reckless way in which it is used, and the reckless material which
it uses. "Vacancies in the factory, daily made, were daily filled by
male and female workers; often queer enough people, and from all
parts--none too coarse for using. The pickpocket, trained to the
loom six months in Bridewell, cam