style; and on
seeing me one morning surprised at this, he said, "Ye see John, _oo_,"
meaning himself and his wife, "began that way." He had a firm, true
voice, and a genuine though roughish gift of singing, and being
methodical in all things, he did what I never heard of in any one
else,--he had seven fixed tunes, one of which he sang on its own set
day. Sabbath morning it was _French_, which he went through with great
_birr_. Monday, _Scarborough_, which, he said, was like my father
cantering. Tuesday, _Coleshill_, that soft exquisite air,--monotonous
and melancholy, soothing and vague, like the sea. This day, Tuesday,
was the day of the week on which his wife and child died, and he
always sang more verses then than on any other. Wednesday was _Irish_;
Thursday, _Old Hundred_; Friday, _Bangor_; and Saturday, _Blackburn_,
that humdrummest of tunes, "as long, and lank, and lean, as is the
ribbed sea-sand." He could not defend it, but had some secret reason
for sticking to it. As to the evenings, they were just the same tunes
in reversed order, only that on Tuesday night he sang _Coleshill_
again, thus dropping _Blackburn_ for evening work. The children could
tell the day of the week by _Jeems's_ tune, and would have been as
much astonished at hearing _Bangor_ on Monday, as at finding St.
Giles's half-way down the Canongate.

I frequently breakfasted with him. He made capital porridge, and I
wish I could get such butter-milk, or at least have such a relish for
it, as in those days. Jeems is away--gone over to the majority; and I
hope I may never forget to be grateful to the dear and queer old man.
I think I see and hear him saying his grace over our bickers with
their _brats_ on, then taking his two books out of the cradle and
reading, not without a certain homely majesty, the first verse of the
99th Psalm,

"Th' eternal Lord doth reign as king,
Let all the people quake;
He sits between the cherubims,
Let th' earth be mov'd and shake;"

then launching out into the noble depths of _Irish_. His chapters were
long, and his prayers short, very scriptural, but by no means
stereotyped, and wonderfully real, _immediate_, as if he was near Him
whom he addressed. Any one hearing the sound and not the words, would
say, "That man is speaking to some one who is with him--who is
present,"--as he often said to me, "There's nae glide dune, John, till
ye get to close _grups_."

Now, I dare say you are marvellin