After the old man had finished his recital, I asked him whether he had
ever seen the poet. "Only aince," he replied. "That was one day when he
was ridin' on a road near here. I met a friend who told me to hurry up,
for Rabbie Burns was just ahead. I whippit up my horse, and came up to a
roughly dressed man, ridin' slowly along, with his blue bonnet pulled
down over his forehead, and his eyes turned toward the groond." "Didn't
you speak to him?" I said. "Nay, nay," replied the man, in a tone of
deep reverence, "he was Rabbie Burns. _I dare na speak to him_. If he
had been any other mon I would have said 'good morrow to ye.'" Beautiful
and eloquent tribute, paid by an unlettered peasant, not to rank or to
wealth, but to a soul--a mighty soul though clad in "hodden grey" like
himself!

The most interesting object was yet to be visited--the cottage of his
birth, I entered it with reverence; and a well dressed, but very old,
woman welcomed me in. "This is the room," she said. I looked around on
the rough stone walls and could not believe that it ever contained such
a soul; for the cottage, with all its subsequent repairs, was hardly
equal to the generality of our early log cabins. The old lady was very
affable. In her early life she had been connected with an inn at
Mauchline, and had seen the poet often. "Rabbie was a funny fellow," she
said; "I ken'd him weel; and he stoppit at our hoose on his way up to
Edinburgh to see the lairds." I asked her if he was not always humorous.
"Nae, nae," she replied, "he used to come in and sit doun wi' his hands
in his lap like a bashful country lad; very glum, till he got a drap o'
whuskey, or heard a gude story, _and then he was aff!_ He was very
poorly in his latter days." Those closing days in Dumfries, steeped in
poverty to the lips, forms one of the most tragic chapters in literary
history; and I know scarcely anything in our language more pathetic than
the letter which he wrote describing his wretched bondage to the