y, we doubt not that thine eyes
will glance--however rapidly--over another page, nor fling it
contemptuously aside, because amidst all the chance and change of
administrations, ministries, and ministers in high places, there murmur
along the channels of our memory "the simple annals of the poor," like
unpolluted streams that sweep not by city walls.

Never were two brothers more unlike in all things--in mind, body,
habits, and disposition--than Lawrie and Willie Logan--and we see, as in
a glass, at this very moment, both their images. "Wee Wise Willie"--for
by that name he was known over several parishes--was one of those
extraordinary creatures that one may liken to a rarest plant, which
nature sows here and there--sometimes for ever unregarded--among the
common families of Flowers. Early sickness had been his lot--continued
with scarcely any interruption from his cradle to school-years--so that
not only was his stature stunted, but his whole frame was delicate in
the extreme; and his pale small-featured face, remarkable for large,
soft, down-looking, hazel eyes, dark-lashed in their lustre, had a sweet
feminine character, that corresponded well with his voice, his motions,
and his in-door pursuits--all serene and composed, and interfering with
the outgoings of no other living thing. All sorts of scholarship, such
as the parish schoolmaster knew, he mastered as if by intuition. His
slate was quickly covered with long calculations, by which the most
puzzling questions were solved; and ere he was nine years old, he had
made many pretty mechanical contrivances with wheels and pulleys, that
showed in what direction lay the natural bent of his genius. Languages,
too, the creature seemed to see into with quickest eyes, and with
quickest ears to catch their sounds--so that, at the same tender age, he
might have been called a linguist, sitting with his Greek and Latin
books on a stool beside him by the fireside during the long winter
nights. All the neighbours who had any books, cheerfully lent them to
"Wee Wise Willie," and the Manse-boys gave him many a supply. At the
head of every class he, of course, was found--but no ambition had he to
be there; and like a bee that works among many thousand others on the
clover-lea, heedless of their murmurs, and intent wholly on its own
fragrant toil, did he go from task to task--although that was no fitting
name for the studious creature's meditations on all he read or
wrought--no more