same, as may be seen in the kirkyard, where it wants a little
reparation and setting upright, having settled the wrong way when
the second Mrs Balwhidder was laid by her side.--But I must not here
enter upon an anticipation.



CHAPTER V YEAR 1764



This year well deserved the name of the monumental year in our
parish; for the young laird of the Breadland, that had been my
pupil, being learning to be an advocate among the faculty in
Edinburgh, with his lady mother, who had removed thither with the
young ladies her daughters, for the benefit of education, sent out
to be put up in the kirk, under the loft over the family vault, an
elegant marble headstone, with an epitaph engraven thereon, in fair
Latin, setting forth many excellent qualities which the old laird,
my patron that was, the inditer thereof said he possessed. I say
the inditer, because it couldna have been the young laird himself,
although he got the credit o't on the stone, for he was nae daub in
my aught at the Latin or any other language. However, he might
improve himself at Edinburgh, where a' manner of genteel things were
then to be got at an easy rate, and doubtless the young laird got a
probationer at the College to write the epitaph; but I have often
wondered sin' syne, how he came to make it in Latin, for assuredly
his dead parent, if he could have seen it, could not have read a
single word o't, notwithstanding it was so vaunty about his virtues,
and other civil and hospitable qualifications.