the king's army and sent out there to fight. Eight years
later he was to have a Highland regiment among his own
army at Quebec. Other themes filled the letters to his
mother. Perhaps he was thinking of Miss Lawson when he
wrote: 'I have a certain turn of mind that favours
matrimony prodigiously. I love children. Two or three
manly sons are a present to the world, and the father
that offers them sees with satisfaction that he is to
live in his successors.' He was thinking more gravely of
a still higher thing when he wrote on his twenty-fifth
birthday, January 2, 1752, to reassure his mother about
the strength of his religion.

Later on in the year, having secured leave of absence,
he wrote to his mother in the best of spirits. He asked
her to look after all the little things he wished to have
done. 'Mr Pattison sends a pointer to Blackheath; if you
will order him to be tied up in your stable, it will
oblige me much. If you hear of a servant who can dress
a wig it will be a favour done me to engage him. I have
another favour to beg of you and you'll think it an odd
one: 'tis to order some currant jelly to be made in a
crock for my use. It is the custom in Scotland to eat it
in the morning with bread.' Then he proposed to have a
shooting-lodge in the Highlands, long before any other
Englishman seems to have thought of what is now so common.
'You know what a whimsical sort of person I am. Nothing
pleases me now but hunting, shooting, and fishing. I have
distant notions of taking a very little house, remote
upon the edge of the forest, merely for sport.'