in the very centre of the nineteenth century, I am but five-and-fifty
years of age, and though it is only once in a week perhaps that my wife
can pluck out a little grey bristle from over my ear, yet I have lived
in a time when the thoughts and the ways of men were as different as
though it were another planet from this. For when I walk in my fields I
can see, down Berwick way, the little fluffs of white smoke which tell
me of this strange new hundred-legged beast, with coals for food and a
thousand men in its belly, for ever crawling over the border.
On a shiny day I can see the glint of the brass work as it takes the
curve near Corriemuir; and then, as I look out to sea, there is the same
beast again, or a dozen of them maybe, leaving a trail of black in the
air and of white in the water, and swimming in the face of the wind as
easily as a salmon up the Tweed. Such a sight as that would have struck
my good old father speechless with wrath as well as surprise; for he was
so stricken with the fear of offending the Creator that he was chary of
contradicting Nature, and always held the new thing to be nearly akin to
the blasphemous. As long as God made the horse, and a man down
Birmingham way the engine, my good old dad would have stuck by the
saddle and the spurs.

But he would have been still more surprised had he seen the peace and
kindliness which reigns now in the hearts of men, and the talk in the
papers and at the meetings that there is to be no more war--save, of
course, with blacks and such like. For when he died we had been
fighting with scarce a break, save only during two short years, for very
nearly a quarter of a century. Think of it, you who live so quietly and
peacefully now! Babies who were born in the war grew to be bearded men
with babies of their own, and still the war continued. Those who had
served and fought in their stalwart prime grew stiff and bent, and yet
the ships and the armies were struggling. It was no wonder that folk