ften pushed back on his kindly brow, but no glass could wholly
obscure the clear integrity and steadfast purity of his eyes; and as
for his smile I have not the art to paint that! It holds in solution
so many sweet though humble virtues of patience, temperance,
self-denial, honest endeavor, that my brush falters in the attempt to
fix the radiant whole upon the canvas. Fashions come and go, modern
improvements transform the arts and trades, manual skill gives way to
the cunning of the machine, but old David Robb, after more than fifty
years of toil, still sits at his hand-loom and weaves his winseys for
the Pettybaw bairnies.

David has small book-learning, so he tells me; and indeed he had need
to tell me, for I should never have discovered it myself,--one misses
it so little when the larger things are all present!

A certain summer visitor in Pettybaw (a compatriot of ours, by the
way) bought a quantity of David's orange-colored winsey, and finding
that it wore like iron, wished to order more. She used the word
"reproduce" in her telegram, as there was one pattern and one color
she specially liked. Perhaps the context was not illuminating, but at
any rate the word "reproduce" was not in David's vocabulary, and
putting back his spectacles he told me his difficulty in deciphering
the exact meaning of his fine-lady patron. He called at the Free kirk
manse,--the meenister was no at hame; then to the library,--it was
closed; then to the Established manse,--the meenister was awa'. At
last he obtained a glance at the schoolmaster's dictionary, and
turning to "reproduce" found that it meant "_naught but mak' ower
again;_"--and with an amused smile at the bedevilments of language he
turned once more to his loom and I to my canvas.

Notwithstanding his unfamiliarity with lang-nebbit words, David has
absorbed a deal of wisdom in his quiet life; though so far as I can
see, his only books have been the green tree outside his window, a
glimpse of the distant ocean, and the toil of his hands.

But I sometimes question if as many scholars are not made as marred in
this wise, for,--to the seeing eye,--the waving leaf and the far sea,
the daily task, one's own heart-beats, and one's neighbor's,--these
teach us in good time to interpret Nature's secrets, and man's, and
God's as well.

XX

"The knights they harpit in their bow'r,
The ladyes sew'd and sang;
The mirth that was in that chamber
Through all