ing absolutely right.

If I had devoted years to the subject, having the body of Susanna Crum
before my eyes every minute of the time for inspiration, Susanna Crum
is what I should have named that maid. Not a vowel could be added, not
a consonant omitted. I said so when first I saw her, and weeks of
intimate acquaintance only deepened my reverence for the parental
genius that had so described her to the world.

III

When we awoke next morning the sun had forgotten itself and was
shining in at Mrs. M'Collop's back windows.

We should have arisen at once to burn sacrifices and offer oblations,
but we had seen the sun frequently in America, and had no idea (poor
fools!) that it was anything to be grateful for, so we accepted it,
almost without comment, as one of the perennial providences of life.

When I speak of Edinburgh sunshine I do not mean, of course, any such
burning, whole-souled, ardent warmth of beam as one finds in countries
where they make a specialty of climate. It is, generally speaking, a
half-hearted, uncertain ray, as pale and as transitory as a martyr's
smile; but its faintest gleam, or its most puerile attempt to gleam,
is admired and recorded by its well-disciplined constituency. Not only
that, but at the first timid blink of the sun the true Scotsman
remarks smilingly, "I think now we shall be having settled weather!"
It is a pathetic optimism, beautiful but quite groundless, and leads
one to believe in the story that when Father Noah refused to take
Sandy into the ark, he sat down philosophically outside, saying, with
a glance at the clouds, "Aweel! the day's jist aboot the ord'nar', an'
I wouldna won'er if we saw the sun afore nicht!"

But what loyal son of Edina cares for these transatlantic gibes, and
where is the dweller within her royal gates who fails to succumb to
the sombre beauty of that old gray town of the North? "Gray! why, it
is gray, or gray and gold, or gray and gold and blue, or gray and gold
and blue and green, or gray and gold and blue and green and purple,
according as the heaven pleases and you choose your ground! But take
it when it is most sombrely gray, where is another such gray city?"

So says one of her lovers, and so the great army of lovers would say,
had they the same gift of language; for

"Even thus, methinks, a city reared should be, ...
Yea, an imperial city that might hold
Five times a hundred noble towns in fee, ...
Thus should her t