their labourers than
between theirs and that of the aristocratic landlords. James Barnet,
the farm steward, said to me--"you have brought down the price of wheat
with your Australian grain, and you do big things in wool, but you can
never touch us in meat." This was quite true in 1865. I expected to see
some improvement in the farm hamlet, but the houses built by the
landlord were still very poor and bare. The wages had risen a little
since 1839, but not much. The wheaten loaf was cheaper, and so was tea
and sugar, but the poor were still living on porridge and bannocks of
barley and pease meal instead of tea and white bread. It was
questionable if they were as well nourished. There were 100 souls
living on the farms of Thornton and Thornton Loch.

A short visit from Mrs. Graham to me at Thornton Loch opened up to Aunt
Mary some of my treasures of memory. She asked me to recite "Brother in
the Lane," Hood's "Tale of a Trumpet," "Locksley Hall." "The Pied
Piper," and Jean Ingelow's "Songs of Seven." She made me promise to go
to see her, and find out how much she had to do for her magnificent
salary of 30 pounds a year; but she impressed Aunt Mary much. Mrs.
Graham had found that the Kirkbeen folks, among whom she lived, were
more impressed by the six months' experiences of two maiden ladies, who
had gone to Valparaiso to join a brother who died, than with her fresh
and racy descriptions of four young Australian colonies. She had seen
Melbourne from 1852 to 1855--a wonderful growth and development. The
only idea the ladies from Valparaiso formed about Australia was that it
was hot and must be Roman Catholic, and consequently the Sabbath must
be desecrated. It was in vain that my friend spoke of the Scots Church
and Dr. Cairns's Church. Heat and Roman Catholicism were inseparably
connected in their minds.

Visiting Uncle and Aunt Handyside and grown-up cousins, whom I left
children, I saw a lot of good farming and the easy circumstances which
I always associated with tenants' holdings in East Lothian. Next farm
to Fenton was Fentonbarns, a Show place, which was held by George Hope,
a cousin of my grandmother's He was an exceptional man--a radical, a
freetrader, and a Unitarian. Cobden died that year. Uncle Handyside was
surprised that George Hope did not go into mourning for him. John
Bright still lived, and he was the bete noire of the Conservatives in
that era; and the abolition of the corn laws was held to be the cause