refully
brushed, and his coat hung awry, and there was sometimes little reason
why he should go home to dinner. It is for the sake of Janet who
adored him that we should remember Jimsy in the days before she died.

Jimsy was a poet, and for the space of thirty years he lived in a great
epic on the Millennium. This is the book presented to me by Jess, that
lies so quietly on my topmost shelf now. Open it, however, and you
will find that the work is entitled "The Millennium: an Epic Poem, in
Twelve Books: by James Duthie." In the little hole in his wall where
Jimsy kept his books there was, I have no doubt--for his effects were
rouped before I knew him except by name--a well-read copy of "Paradise
Lost." Some people would smile, perhaps, if they read the two epics
side by side, and others might sigh, for there is a great deal in "The
Millennium" that Milton could take credit for. Jimsy had educated
himself, after the idea of writing something that the world would not
willingly let die came to him, and he began his book before his
education was complete. So far as I know, he never wrote a line that
had not to do with "The Millennium." He was ever a man sparing of his
plural tenses, and "The Millennium" says "has" for "have"; a vain word,
indeed, which Thrums would only have permitted as a poetical licence.
The one original character in the poem is the devil, of whom Jimsy
gives a picture that is startling and graphic, and received the
approval of the Auld Licht minister.

By trade Jimsy was a printer, a master-printer with no one under him,
and he printed and bound his book, ten copies in all, as well as wrote
it. To print the poem took him, I dare say, nearly as long as to write
it, and he set up the pages as they were written, one by one. The book
is only printed on one side of the leaf, and each page was produced
separately like a little hand-bill. Those who may pick up the
book--but who will care to do so?--will think that the author or his
printer could not spell--but they would not do Jimsy that injustice if
they knew the circumstances in which it was produced. He had but a
small stock of type, and on many occasions he ran out of a letter. The
letter e tried him sorely. Those who knew him best said that he tried
to think of words without an e in them, but when he was baffled he had
to use a little a or an o instead. He could print correctly, but in
the book there are a good many capital letters in the