To Aberdeen, accordingly, Edward went. He took a shop in the great gay
thoroughfare of that cold northern city--Union Street--and prepared to
receive the world at large, and to get the money for the longed-for
books and the much-desired microscope. Now, Aberdeen is a big, busy,
bustling town; it has plenty of amusements and recreations; it has two
colleges and many learned men of its own; and the people did not care to
come and see the working shoemaker's poor small collection. If he had
been a president of the British Association for the Advancement of
Science, now--some learned knight or baronet come down by special train
from London--the Aberdeen doctors and professors might have rushed to
hear his address; or if he had been a famous music-hall singer or an
imitation negro minstrel, the public at large might have flocked to be
amused and degraded by his parrot-like buffoonery; but as he was only a
working shoemaker from Banff, with a heaven-born instinct for watching
and discovering all the strange beasts and birds of Scotland, and the
ways and thoughts of them, why, of course, respectable Aberdeen, high or
low, would have nothing in particular to say to him. Day after day went
by, and hardly anybody came, till at last poor Edward's heart sank
terribly within him. Even the few who did come were loth to believe that
a working shoemaker could ever have gathered together such a large
collection by his own exertions.

"Do you mean to say," said one of the Aberdeen physicians to Edward,
"that you've maintained your wife and family by working at your trade,
all the while that you've been making this collection?"

"Yes, I do," Edward answered.

"Oh, nonsense!" the doctor said. "How is it possible you could have done