of best wax at his tomb. Poor devil! he was only the weakest - or,
at least, a very weak strong man.

R. L. S.



Letter: TO MRS. SITWELL



17 HERIOT ROW, EDINBURGH, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 1873.

. . . I WAS over last night, contrary to my own wish, in Leven,
Fife; and this morning I had a conversation of which, I think, some
account might interest you. I was up with a cousin who was fishing
in a mill-lade, and a shower of rain drove me for shelter into a
tumbledown steading attached to the mill. There I found a labourer
cleaning a byre, with whom I fell into talk. The man was to all
appearance as heavy, as HEBETE, as any English clodhopper; but I
knew I was in Scotland, and launched out forthright into Education
and Politics and the aims of one's life. I told him how I had
found the peasantry in Suffolk, and added that their state had made
me feel quite pained and down-hearted. 'It but to do that,' he
said, 'to onybody that thinks at a'!' Then, again, he said that he
could not conceive how anything could daunt or cast down a man who
had an aim in life. 'They that have had a guid schoolin' and do
nae mair, whatever they do, they have done; but him that has aye
something ayont need never be weary.' I have had to mutilate the
dialect much, so that it might be comprehensible to you; but I