rivals did the work for him, and protest that it was quite safe in
spite of his own considerate distance and the cries of the
distressed assistant. In regard to bees, he was rather a man of
word than deed, and some of his most striking sentences had the
bees for text. "THEY ARE INDEED WONDERFUL CREATURES, MEM," he said
once. "THEY JUST MIND ME O' WHAT THE QUEEN OF SHEBA SAID TO
SOLOMON - AND I THINK SHE SAID IT WI' A SIGH, - 'THE HALF OF IT
HATH NOT BEEN TOLD UNTO ME.'"

As far as the Bible goes, he was deeply read. Like the old
Covenanters, of whom he was the worthy representative, his mouth
was full of sacred quotations; it was the book that he had studied
most and thought upon most deeply. To many people in his station
the Bible, and perhaps Burns, are the only books of any vital
literary merit that they read, feeding themselves, for the rest, on
the draff of country newspapers, and the very instructive but not
very palatable pabulum of some cheap educational series. This was
Robert's position. All day long he had dreamed of the Hebrew
stories, and his head had been full of Hebrew poetry and Gospel
ethics; until they had struck deep root into his heart, and the
very expressions had become a part of him; so that he rarely spoke
without some antique idiom or Scripture mannerism that gave a
raciness to the merest trivialities of talk. But the influence of
the Bible did not stop here. There was more in Robert than quaint
phrase and ready store of reference. He was imbued with a spirit
of peace and love: he interposed between man and wife: he threw
himself between the angry, touching his hat the while with all the
ceremony of an usher: he protected the birds from everybody but
himself, seeing, I suppose, a great difference between official
execution and wanton sport. His mistress telling him one day to