Burns once explained to Doctor Moore that the first fine, careless rapture
of his song was awakened into being when he was sixteen years old, by "a
bonnie sweet sonsie lass" whom we now know as "Handsome Nell." Her other
name to us is vapor, and history is silent as to her life-pilgrimage.
Whether she lived to realize that she had first given voice to one of the
great singers of earth--of this we are also ignorant. She was one year
younger than Burns, and little more than a child when she and Bobby lagged
behind the troop of tired haymakers, and walked home, hand in hand, in the
gloaming. Here is one of the stanzas addressed to "Handsome Nell":

"She dresses all so clean and neat,
Both decent and genteel,
And then there's something in her gait
Makes any dress look weel."

And how could Nell then ever guess why her cheeks burned scarlet, and why
she was so sorry when haying-time was over? She was sweet, innocent,
artless, and their love was very natural, tender, innocent. It's a pity
that all loves can not remain in just that idyllic, milkmaid stage, where
the girls and boys awaken in the early morning with the birds, and hasten
forth barefoot across the dewy fields to find the cows. But love never
tarries. Love is progressive; it can not stand still. I have heard of the
"passiveness" of woman's love, but the passive woman is only one who does
not love--she merely consents to have affection lavished upon her. When I
hear of a passive woman, I always think of the befuddled sailor who once
saw one of those dummy dress-frames, all duly clothed in flaming bombazine
(I think it was bombazine) in front of a clothing establishment. The
sailor, mistaking the dummy for a near and dear lady friend, embraced the
wire apparatus and imprinted a resounding smack on the chaste
plaster-of-Paris cheek. Meeting the sure-enough lady shortly after, he