ter; and one or two of the goodwives, observing
our worn-out looks, brought forth milk instead of water, so with that
and hips and haws we came in little the worse." Little they cared for
fatigue and inconvenience; they were things to laugh over when the lads
got back. Scott only wished he had been a player on the flute, like
George Primrose in the _Vicar of Wakefield_, and his father shook his
head and doubted the boy was born "for nae better than a gangrel
scrapegut"--reproach of little gravity, as the expedition so poorly
provisioned was of little harm. Thus the young gentlemen bore cheerfully
what would have been hardship to a ploughman, and gibed even at each
other's weaknesses without a spark of unkindness, which made the
weakness itself into a robust matter of fact not to be brooded over.
High susceptibility might have suffered from the treatment, but high
susceptibility generally means egotism and inordinate self-esteem,
qualities which it is the very best use of public school and college to
conjure away.

Nothing indeed more cheerful, more full of endless frolic and enjoyment,
fresh air and fun and feeling, ever existed than the young manhood of
Walter Scott. Talk of Scotch gravity and seriousness! The houses in
which they were received as they roamed about--farmers' or lairds', it
was all the same to the merry lads--were only too uproarious in their
mirth; with songs and laughter they made the welkin ring. At home in
Edinburgh the fun might be less noisy, but it was not less sincere. In
the very Parliament House itself the young men clustered in their
corner, telling each other the last good things, and with much ado to
keep their young laughter within the bounds of decorum. The judge on the
Bench, the Lord President himself, greatest potentate of all, was not
more safe from the audacious wits than poor Peter Peebles. There was
nothing they did not laugh at, themselves and each other as much as Lord
Braxfield, and all the humours of a town more full of anecdote and jest,
laughable eccentricity and keen satire and amusing comment, than any
town in literature. The best joke of all perhaps was Sydney Smith's
famous _bon mot_ about the surgical operation, which no doubt he meant
as an excellent joke in the midst of that laughing community, where the
fun was only too fast and furious. Nowadays, when life is more temperate
and the world in general has mended its manners, the habits of that
period fill us with dismay