the breakfast, and a merry feast it was, and one
for the three of us to hold as a lifelong memory, for only those who
had the honor to know Burns could understand that the "best of him was
in his talk." In the year of which I write all the eyes of Edinburgh
were fixed upon him, and his toasts, his epigrams, his love affairs
were the scandal of the town and his own countryside. There was some
flouting of him at this very meal, I recall, by Creech, who was deep in
his affairs, concerning a Mauchline lassie who had thrown his love back
at him with some violence and scandal; but he was not in the least
dashed either by the event or the naming of it, and, seizing a glass,
he called out, with the jolliest laugh in the world:

"Their tricks and crafts hae put me daft,
They've ta'en me in--and a' that,
But clear your decks! and here's 'The Sex,'
I like the jades for a' that,"----

the applause which greeted this sally bringing the servants to the
window, though, in fact, when it was known that Burns was in the house
there was no keeping them out of the room.

I do not feel, even at this late day, that I need an excuse for the
admiration I have of Burns, the greatest poet, in my judgment, who ever
lived. I knew his faults, if faults they were, but, before God, I knew
his temptations as well, and can speak with greatest thankfulness of
one he put behind him.

Pastor Muirkirk, of the New Light, in one of his more relaxed moments,
said to me:

"The Lord cast seven devils out of the man in the scriptures because
his nature was big enough to hold seven devils. Most of us, laddie," he
went on, "are not big enough to hold half a devil," which explains the
thought I have of Burns to a nicety, for it was surely the very bigness
of his nature, the instant sympathy with all who lived, which brought
many of the troubles to him for which he has been greatly blamed. But
this can be said of him: that no man I ever knew, from the highest lord
in the land down, presented himself to the world in a saner or more
balanced manner. I have known him to breakfast with tramps at an
ale-house in the morning, walk arm in arm with a duke down High Street
in the afternoon, and leave him perchance to dine with some poor
country acquaintance up from Ayr for a day's buying.

It was after Creech and his friend had left us that Burns turned toward
me.

"There is a matter upon which I am undecided whether it is good taste
for me to s