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CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME 
 OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT 
 FUND GIVEN IN 1891 BY 
 
 HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE 
 
Cornell University Library 
 SF 33.C61A3 
 
 Old days recalled. 
 
 3 1924 012 418 020 
 
I Cornell University 
 
 j) Library 
 
 The original of tiiis book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924012418020 
 
OLD DAYS RECALLED 
 
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 1 
 
OLD DAYS RECALLED 
 
 JOHN CLAY 
 
 Chicago. 1915 
 
PREFACE 
 
 SOME months ago I contributed to a leading 
 live stock paper a reminiscent article about 
 my early days in Canada. Like ivy, my 
 memory had clung to little incidents, simple in 
 themselves, but which, when strung together in a 
 story, seemed to interest the public, for the little 
 brochure found its way through various newspapers 
 into many hands. Quite a nxmiber of letters also 
 came to hand and one ifriend said, "You give us 
 too little of this class of work. It revives old days, 
 brings back scenes to mind, works on the imagin- 
 ation, and is an incentive for our younger gener- 
 ation." The heading of the article was the name 
 of a steer bom over thirty years ago, but the able 
 editor blue-penciled the plebeian name and inserted 
 "Great Days Recalled." Following up this 
 thought I sit down to depict some of the scenes, 
 and to describe some of the people who filled 
 the stage of my early days in a simple country that 
 knew little of the great outside world. 
 
 J.C. 
 
Harvesters at Dinner 
 
Day set on Norham's castled steep. 
 And Tweed's fair river, broad and deep. 
 
 And Cheviot's mountain's lone; 
 The battled towers, the donjon keep. 
 The loophole grates where captives weep. 
 The flanking walls that 'round it sweep, 
 
 In yellow lustre shone. 
 
 — Marmion. 
 
 THE river Tweed, rising among moss hags, gathering 
 strength and force from countless rills that come from 
 heather clad hills, at last breaks away from them, and 
 leaving mystic Melrose behind, weeping almost as it bids adieu 
 to the Eildon hills and sainted Dryburgh, flows in gentle cadence 
 past Kelso and Coldstream, till at Berwick it is lost in the 
 German Ocean, that North Sea upon whose bosom as I write 
 many a wild drama is being enacted. By its shores are pleasant 
 haugh lands, rich and prolific. Gently, by wide sweeps of 
 swelling uplands, the vale is left and you rise with varying 
 landscapes to beautiful hills on either side. Then it leaves the 
 old bridge at Kelso and wanders through a rich vale, level to 
 the eye, densely wooded as you look at it from some vantage 
 point, but in reality full of rich farms and lovely homesteads. 
 Here the river is the boimdary betwixt England and Scotland, 
 at least after it passes Kelso by some six miles. On the English 
 side lies north Northumberland, land of romance, — for here in 
 glorious greenery is Flodden Field. Ah, yes, to us Scotch 
 folks, fatal Flodden; romantic Ford, its castle standing amidst 
 glorious woods; and then Norham, noblest of them all; and far 
 away over the mere is Holy Island where Constance de Beverley 
 paid the penalty of illicit love. I see the great breakers, 
 curling their silver foam, dash 'on the yellow sands at Bam- 
 burgh, and rush wildly across the shallow, sea beaten fens of 
 
 Budle Bay. 
 
 North of the Tweed, opposite Northumberland, is the How 
 of the Merse. It is a level tract of Ijmd, eighteen miles long 
 and from ten to twelve miles wide, possibly more as it breaks 
 
 [7] 
 
OLD DAYS RECALLED 
 
 into the Lammermoor hills. Almost in the center of this roman- 
 tic vale, near to Ladykirk, redolent of Shorthorn lore and of a 
 Stuart's liberality, at least legend says so, it was my good for- 
 time to be bom. My father and forefathers had farmed a lot 
 of land in this and the adjoining counties. They were wedded 
 to the soil. Some would break away, but as they were prolific 
 in their day and generation, there was always a good crop of 
 farmers among them. They rented land, occasionally they 
 aspired to own some; and that generally spelt disaster, for few 
 men possess the ability in Great Britain to farm their own prop- 
 erty successfully. Exceptions there are to every rule, but in our 
 case when my kinfolks purchased land they began going down- 
 hill. As a big family, with many ramifications, with outshoots 
 in nearly every corner of the globe, our family tree showed up 
 very strongly in tillers of the soil — ^renters of land, many of 
 them growing rich and affluent in long years of strenuous work 
 in the valleys and on the hillsides of the Borders. 
 
 And so it came that my father when he was just over 
 twenty-one years of age, settled down to the family calling. 
 Down in the lowest spot of the Merse he farmed 523 acres of 
 land. It was stiff, heavy land, like glue in wet weather and 
 brick under summer suns. But catch it right, — which took 
 patience, — and it was prolific. In my early memory it was wet, 
 with big open ditches that worked slowly and none too well. 
 Bare fallow covered with a coating of farm yard manure was 
 followed by wheat and then clover. 
 
 In my great grandfather's days it was cropped as follows: 
 oats, bare fallow, wheat, clover, oats, turnips, barley, clover, — 
 the eight course shift. There was a field or two of old grass, or 
 possibly the clover was grazed a second year, but it was sub- 
 stantially worked on the above shift. My father first managed 
 the place, then succeeded to the lease on the above gentleman's 
 demise. He commenced on little capital, but he went at his 
 work with energy. Fifty years afterward he retired, so to speak, 
 going to the capital of Scotland to live, but he retained two of 
 his farms and was as busy as ever. The farm was almost square 
 — south of it east and west ran a main road. Parallel to this 
 another road ran, and then north and south it was intersected 
 by another road seldom used except for farm work, but kept up 
 
 [8] 
 
OLD DAYS RECALLED 
 
 by the county. In this way it was splendidly served. The 
 steading stood on the latter highway and was excellently 
 adapted to the wants of the farm. A quarter of a mile away, 
 amid a grove of trees, musical with birds in spring and summer 
 days, stood the farm house, the old square building that haunts 
 me with a thousand pleasant memories. I see it now as I write, 
 its windows with white blinds half drawn, flashing back the 
 evening svm; the green lawn, the old time garden, the small 
 conservatory. Down in the cow pasture the lark was making 
 melody, blessing as it were with amorous notes her little home 
 amid the grass. 
 
 Golden hours those, when the fanner with his wife and 
 family took their evening walk in the long twilight of those 
 northern climes. 
 
 Long after the sun had gone, even when the afterglow was 
 deepening into the silent twilight, they would come back across 
 an old grass field kissed with dew and soft imder foot, the ruddy 
 touch of glorious health on every cheek, and then when the 
 lamp was lit books came out and there was silence. Lastly, at 
 nine o'clock the big family Bible was placed on the table, a 
 chapter was read, prayers were said, and then the simple sup- 
 per of bread and cheese and butter was discussed. The younger 
 members of the family went to bed. The parents had their hot 
 Scotch. It made their tongues wag a bit, although they only 
 brewed once, and then meagerly. The day's doings were dis- 
 cussed, old stories were told, some castles built and hopes ex- 
 pressed, and sometimes in imagination we sailed away to shores 
 that in later days some of us have reached. 
 
 Curb with gentle hand the swelling waves of youth, quench 
 not the burning fires within an honest heart reaching for greater 
 things as it looks into the future! It is a long way over the plain, 
 across the river, up the green hillsides to the liinnacle of success, 
 but you reach the goal if there is honesty of purpose and stem 
 resolve. That was the text in our home. It was explained hour 
 by hour, and then at last came good-nights and peaceful sleep. 
 
 My grandfather, who was eighteen years old in the year 
 that the battle of Waterloo was fought, and which ended the 
 meteoric and terrific life of Napoleon, used to tell many tales 
 of the strenuous days that as a youth he passed through in the 
 
 [9] 
 
OLD DAYS RECALLED 
 
 old seaport town of Berwick-on-Tweed. Its citizens and the 
 yeomen of the surrounding country were ready to spring to 
 arms. Europe was exhausted and Great Britain was for the time 
 being paralyzed. His father had made a fortune in wheat. He 
 bought in the fall and winter, stored it in granaries, dried it by 
 turning it over weekly, — for it lay in bulk, — and then shipped 
 it to all parts of the country by sea, for railroads were not 
 dreamed of in those days. If you visit the old Border town 
 today, away in back alleys you will see some of the wheat lofts, 
 now grey and grim, standing as silent monuments of [almost for- 
 gotten days. Below the ground, like catacombs, are cellars that 
 once on a day were full of claret, port and sherry. Farming 
 was at a low ebb. Money was scarce and wages meager, and so 
 they continued for many years. 
 
 But there was a cloud in the horizon. The French Revo- 
 lution and the wars which enshrouded it, which produced the 
 archfiend of modern days, a historic rival of Alexander and 
 Caesar, had set the cautious, conservative and long suffering 
 Anglo-Saxon to thinking. The falSe gods of the Georgian age 
 were being shaken to the foundation. The shocking morals of 
 kings and courtiers, the semi-slavery of the middle and lower 
 classes, the extravagance of the rich, the pathetic poverty of 
 the poor, all led up to a fierce onslaught on men and methods 
 which during the struggle for national existence had full swing. 
 On the Continent of Europe blood had flowed and flowed copi- 
 ously while things changed there, but in Britain it was a silent, 
 bloodless change. It was born of nature, helped by science, and 
 blossomed in the Victorian age. 
 
 Two great currents in national life met about the year 1832. 
 In that year the first reform bill was passed. This extended the 
 franchise. The second was the application of steam to the 
 locomotive. Not even the prophetic Moses viewing the world 
 from Nebo's lonely top could have foreseen the evolution of 
 those mighty factors in the life of a nation. The honesty of 
 Grey and the genius of Stephenson started in the British Isles 
 that ball rolling which with increasing volume has been felt in 
 every country and clime. Other countries have prospered even 
 more than she, but the birthplace in the north of England of 
 the great motive power that now circles the globe led on and 
 
 [10] 
 
OLD DAYS RECALLED 
 
 amplified that freedom of thought which perhaps is more evi- 
 dent among the English speaking race than any other class of 
 people. 
 
 My father's recollection took him back to the day when 
 about eight years of age he crossed the fields of the farm upon 
 which he was bom to the little village about a mile away where 
 a dirmer or similar entertainment celebrated the passing of the 
 Reform Act. The farmer and the well-to-do middleman were 
 given a vote, a voice in the government of their coimtry, but 
 over forty years passed before the artisan and the well educated 
 peasant acquired the same privilege. 
 
 Those were hard days for the farmers and their employes. 
 
 In 1846 the duty was taken off wheat as the flag of freetrade 
 was hoisted, just as a great railroad boom collapsed. Matters 
 were worse than ever and continued more or less in the same 
 condition till the American Civil War. My father saw that a 
 small lowland farm was in the first place too small for his energy 
 and natural desire to expand, and, further still, the way pointed 
 to a great expansion in the live stock business. New grain fields 
 were opening up. The American wheat fields and the vast 
 granary of southern Russia were being exploited and developed. 
 So another farm was taken in Lammermoor, a hill and a half 
 hill farm, sound of soil, prolific of grass and purple heather. It 
 was a gold mine in its way, for it was capable of great develop- 
 ment. It reacted to the plough, the tile drain, the use of lime 
 and the cultivation of the turnip. Stone walls grew up by 
 magic and the grey bent turned under bloomed with splendid 
 crops. 
 
 About this time I came upon the scene, and I remember as 
 if it were yesterday the resistless energy that made two blades 
 of grass grow instead of one. On the lower lands Leicester- 
 Cheviots found a congenial home, while up where the heather 
 bloomed the hardy Blackfaces grazed the year round. Days 
 never to be forgotten or effaced from memory! 
 
 Down in the lowlands there was skillful maneuvering. The 
 weather was everything. Touch not the land when it was too 
 wet, hurry forward your work when the season was favorable, 
 but up on the hill farm the soil was light, friable, and easily 
 handled. You could not insult it under any conditions. One 
 
 111] 
 
OLD DAYS RECALLED 
 
 you had to study like a pampered child who had, however, 
 great possibilities in its nature. The other you could abuse 
 and it would always come up smiling. 
 
 The farmer spent from the middle of September till June 
 on his lowland place, the balance of the year at his other holding; 
 and so it came about that my early Ufe during the summer 
 months was spent on the rising slopes of the Lammermoor hills. 
 They rose gently, almost imperceptibly, from the level lands 
 below. Gradually you went from fields of clover, turnips and 
 golden grain to sweeps of heather that in August bloomed with 
 purple hue. There was a fragrance in the air that seemed to 
 electrify both body and soul. 
 
 Under foot was the springy heather, knee deep at places; 
 and then there were boggy lands intersected with sheep drains 
 that carried the water away, and instead of rushes, acres of fine 
 grass took their place. 
 
 The hill sheep, guided by instinct, came every morning from 
 the heights, cropped their way slowly to the lower lands varying 
 their food morning, noon and night. From these sheep drains 
 and moss hags came little rivulets, dark colored, that gradually 
 found their way to channelly beds, and gathering strength 
 became streams, birthplaces of mighty rivers. How they 
 sparkled and sang and whiled away the merry hours over stones 
 and rocks, through stretches of heather, cutting deep courses 
 through pleasant meadow lands, where gaudy butterflies flickered 
 from flower to flower; where larks reared their young, singing 
 joyous songs between their family duties; where the corn-crake, 
 like a will-of-the-wisp, led you a merry dance and no results. 
 
 Down below the old farm house, across a grass field, over a 
 rustic stile made by projecting pieces of rock in the stone wall 
 was the bathing pool. 
 
 Those were the days when youth was at the helm and pleasure 
 at the prow, days of endless joy. 
 
 When you were tired of swimming and splashing your 
 neighbor, you guddled for trout and many a speckled beauty 
 came to hand. Instead of using a towel you ran a race on the 
 bank, nature's drying machine, and then after dressing you 
 would probably continue the day's fun and amusement by taking 
 your rod in hand and follow upstream where hungry fish lying 
 
 [12] 
 
OLD DAYS RECALLED 
 
 under banks or at the tail end of streams waited for food. There 
 was a touch, the line straightened and on the bank lay a wriggling, 
 struggling trout. The hook came out and in went the prize to 
 the willow basket. 
 
 When Simday came we were marched off to church. How 
 tempting the pool looked from the bridge where we crossed the 
 stream! It seemed cooler and more pleasant than usual, as the 
 old birch branches hung gracefully over it. It seemed to babble 
 louder and sing more cheerily than ordinarily and the silver 
 foam, churned as the dark brown stream came leaping over tiny 
 rocks, glistened in the sun. Even the peat reek had a finer 
 incense and the sun shone brighter as leaving the bridge we 
 walked up a grass covered road, guarded by solemn pine 
 trees. And so with heavy hearts we toddled behind our elders, 
 through pleasant fields, across strips of wood and a bit of moorland 
 where shy sheep grazed, and on to an ivy-covered church aroimd 
 whose door in little groups the members and their families were 
 gossiping. My father generally interviewed the minister before 
 the service, but we solemnly, under the guidance of my mother, 
 filed into the church down the aisle to very uncomfortable seats 
 on the west side of the pulpit. 
 
 It was a cold, callous sort of place. The shadow of an iron 
 time, of Covenanting days, hung over it. The seats were arranged 
 with prison-like precision. They were stiff, hard, straight up 
 and down and very uncomfortable, but withal the hearers slept 
 many an hour as the earnest divine expotmded the Scriptxires. 
 Many a year has slipped past since those days. Most of the 
 listeners and the sleepers have crossed the Great Divide, but 
 those Sabbath days are printed deep in my memory. Not 
 in a thousand years could one forget them. It was a solemn 
 day. The birds sang gaily, the streams sparkled and sputtered 
 over their pebbles, the gentle breeze with odors borne from heather 
 hillsides came pleasantly through the sighing pine woods; all 
 nature seemed gay, from bleating lamb to noisy rook, except 
 mankind. There was no laughter in the air, no song of joy and 
 then as a sort of cold douche, the naturally light hearted, rather 
 humorous minister had to preach about the miserable sirmers 
 of this world and the awful catastrophies that were to happen 
 in the next. 
 
 [13] 
 
OLD DAYS RECALLED 
 
 The austerity of that Scotch Sabbath led on to revolt in 
 later days, not to atheism or infidelity, but a rebound from the 
 strict formality, the censorship of other people's morals and ways 
 of life. To illustrate the perverse ways conscience could look 
 at things, you were doomed to a cold dinner after your spiritual 
 feast, but there was no trouble in getting all the hot boiling 
 water necessary from the kitchen to make hot Scotch with. 
 And so men's minds have changed and nowadays freedom floats 
 gaily along the stream of life in Scotland. There are no regrets. 
 The Spartan simplicity of a Lammermoor home has its consola- 
 tions. The rigid economy practiced; the self-sacrifice of the 
 parents; the self-denial towards one another; the life with nature 
 amid the silent hills and the well remembered streams atone for 
 that rigid Presbyterianism which at the time was a thorn in the 
 flesh. 
 
 (141 
 
The Blacksmith 
 Shop 
 
 Fording a Stream 
 
"A little learning is a dangerous thing; 
 Drink deep or taste not the Pierian spring." 
 
 SOMEWHERE in the year 1802, there was bom in Scot- 
 land a man, Hugh Miller by name, of lowly birth, who 
 after a very slender education became a stone mason, 
 but who, as the years rolled on, gave to the world some great 
 books, among them "The Old Red Sandstone," and "The 
 Testimony of the Rocks. " "My Schools and Schoolmasters" was 
 another, a story of entrancing interest, written in simple lan- 
 guage, the record of a similar uplift as the lot of Lincoln. 
 
 Every man and woman too goes through the same experience. 
 Miller's vivid imagination and fervid fancy clothed the events of 
 his ecirly life with a realism, and yet a modesty that touches 
 your heart. 
 
 For it is not so much in the schoolroom that you imbibe 
 your education, as away from it. The daily events as they come 
 along form character and give strength to your mind. Men like 
 Miller gather reliance from their struggles. With scanty food 
 and no advantages they commence early to seek for light. Tender 
 love from a mother's heart they often have. It is an inspira- 
 tion and helps, but the boy after all makes the man and the 
 results depend on his own efforts. A bit of luck may come, but 
 it is generally preceded by hard work, self denial and a looking 
 forward to greater things. In this country where every man has 
 to work, the boy bom in a log cabin, who has to do the chores, 
 is far better fitted for the fierce battle of competition than the 
 spoon fed college lad. The former imbibes an experience which 
 the latter can never have, and so I am always thankful that my 
 early life was spent amidst simple scenes where economy and 
 thrift were practiced and held up as virtues. 
 
 There are always incidents in a man's life that are graven 
 deep in memory, and although I have hazy ideas of events further 
 back, yet the one that comes up as a vivid picture of my first 
 great experience and deep sorrow is the death of a brother. 
 
 [15] 
 
OLD DAYS RECALLED 
 
 He was a little chap, just three years old when scarlet fever took 
 him away. He lay for several days very sick in the nursery, an 
 old fashioned room whose walls were covered with pictures cut 
 from illustrated papers. We tried to amuse him, but in vain. 
 The pallor of death was written on his brow; the tender cheeks 
 covered with touches of pink grew white as the disease progressed. 
 The whole household was in agony and silent grief. The end came 
 early one morning. At dawn the other children got up. I 
 happened to go into the kitchen. 
 
 There by the fireside was an old woman, grey of hair but 
 strong of face. In days gone by she had been nurse in my father's 
 family and she had been called in before the undertaker, who was 
 the local carpenter, came upon the scene. She sat by the fireside 
 where the breakfast was being cooked, and she was telling a 
 servant how easily the little boy had slipped away to the Great 
 Beyond. 
 
 "You needna' get ready for skule the day, Laddie," was her re- 
 mark. At breakfast every one was in tears. Even my father, iron- 
 willed and strong of build, broke down. The grey dawn broke into 
 daylight, for it was midwinter. The carpenter came, the little 
 body was incased in a black coffin studded with brass tacks. It 
 was placed in the drawing room. That night before we retired 
 we took a last look at it. It was a weird farewell in the sickly 
 light of a candle, for we used nothing else in those days. Next 
 morning my father took the little coffin and contents to the 
 family burying ground, some sixteen miles away. 
 
 When I go back there in these later days, look at the head 
 stones, reading on them the story of days gone by, the whole 
 scene comes back with graphic realism. The declining village, 
 with some modem cottages, a few "buts and bens" with thatched 
 roofs, the quaint church surrounded by the kirk yard, God's 
 acre, the green mounds under which lie the village folks for 
 generations back, the old worn tombstones with stories of the 
 dead written over them, many of them weather beaten, scaling 
 off and falling into decline. A sad, sad scene, telling of past 
 glories and no certainty of that life eternal which hoping mankind 
 wishes for. In the afternoon of which the little boy was taken 
 away, the minister imder whom we worshiped came to call. 
 He was a dark, swarthy man with a keen brilliant eye set in a 
 
 [16] 
 
OLD DAYS RECALLED 
 
 noble head. His manner, while reserved, was kindly and dignified ; 
 a man who had gone through much sorrow, so that in this case 
 he could comfort the distressed. He sat in the darkened room 
 and talked earnestly, touching with mellow tones the dread sub- 
 ject of death, which like a thief in the night had entered this 
 pleasant home. And then he opened up a vision of other worlds 
 to come. With the hand of an artist he lifted away the heavy 
 clouds, made rifts in them and peeps of sunshine chased away 
 some of the shadows. And as the afternoon wore on, the candles 
 lit and the tea table covered with spotless linen was surrounded 
 by the family, the sombre morning was softened with a touch 
 of warmth from the good man's heart. On me those hallowed 
 days left an impression that can never be effaced. The radiant 
 glory of the minister's eye flashing like a sun-kissed jewel, still 
 revolves around my conscience which lies at the bottom of a sea 
 that no man can fathom. 
 
 For many years Scotland has taken a leading place in the 
 world's affairs. Her Spartan upbringing in a cold, inhospitable 
 country and clime centuries ago tended towards the survival of 
 the fittest. She was almost continuously at war internally or 
 externally and her men and women became heroic 
 in their way. When the days of peace came a himdred years 
 ago, she settled down to take the best out of agriculture and 
 commerce. She was religious, intensely moral, with a grip on 
 the Sabbath Day, and anything else she could lay her hands on. 
 But nothing interfered with business. As the home coimtry 
 grew too small she branched into foreign lands. Thrift, skill, 
 tenacity carried her sons to the front. Aside from the inherit- 
 ance of these splendid qualities, there was another reason. It 
 was the education she provided in her parish schools and finished 
 up in her universities. 
 
 Those schools, often very crowded, again sifted out the best. 
 There the earnest student got his reward. The loafer naturally 
 was left behind and the clever, quick, industrious child got the 
 most attention. The masters were human and they spent their 
 best talents where the results would show to most advantage. 
 The herd laddie, the ploughman's son, the boy from the big 
 hoose met on equal terms, and they had to reach the goal under 
 similar conditions. The man who can read, write and coimt has 
 
 [17] 
 
OLD DAYS RECALLED 
 
 enough of learning for commerce. After he has acquired the " three 
 R's," his further education is in his own hands. And it is in 
 commerce that the Scotch have won their spurs in world contests. 
 They have shown up well in art, literature and divinity. They 
 have put a Raeburn against a Rem- 
 brandt, a Bums against a Horace or Goethe, 
 a Knox against a Luther. In these they 
 have done their part, but upon the ocean, 
 in the mine, in the world of steel, in every 
 line of business they excel and the tap root 
 of excellence has been the old fashioned, 
 now out of date, parish school. 
 
 To one of those parish schools when I 
 was just past six years old it was my lot to 
 
 JOHN CLAY IN I860 J f J J 
 
 be sent. Every morning a bright eyed, rosy 
 cheeked girl of about fourteen years of age took me along with 
 her. Our path lay over the «ame road, as we went to church. 
 We trod the same velvet paths across fields where shaggy High- 
 land cattle grazed, where larks sang and the stock dove cooed, 
 where dragon-flies and bees and butterflies drew life from tender 
 flowers that decked the greensward. We all met in the one room 
 with a low ceiling, where a gray-haired old gentleman with a wise 
 look struck fear into our young hearts. Of those days I have 
 only a dim recollection. At noon time we all went to the bath- 
 ing pool in a little stream some half a mile away. My progress 
 must have been slow, because one night when my father and the 
 schoolmaster were enjoying a tumbler of toddy, possibly more 
 than one, the latter expressed himself as follows in regard to a 
 question about my ability. He said: "To tell you the truth, sir, 
 the laddie is slow at the uptake and I doot when he grows up he 
 will only be fit for the plow." The good old man when he re- 
 tired from his scholastic duties became a farmer in a small way 
 at a place called "Holett's Ha," (the hall of the owls), and he 
 spent the balance of his days there. 
 
 My second, and really first effort at schooling was at the 
 parish school of Whitsome, a little village in the county of Ber- 
 wickshire. There my father and other ancestors had attended. 
 On, my advent, John Tumbull was the master and as there was 
 a large attendance an assistant had to be employed, but it was 
 
 [18] 
 
OLD DAYS RECALLED 
 
 the old man that did the most of the work. He was a sparely 
 built man with a keen intellectual face, thin hair hung over his 
 temples. If it bristled a bit, then look out, for the tawse went 
 that day and they were needed. The boys especially were un- 
 ruly. Many of them who worked during summer on the farm 
 and attended school in winter were almost grown men and it 
 took the old dominie as much as he could do to handle them 
 when the rod or strap was administered. He seemed to go de- 
 mented sometimes and little wonder when you look back on the 
 
 
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 FAC-SIMILE OF BILL FOR EDUCATION AND SCHOOL SUPPLIES 
 
 job he had on hand. He had, as I found out in later years, a 
 fine nature and he raised up with the help of an economical wife 
 a splendid family. On the playgroimd the tests of strength and 
 contests generally were West against East. Sometimes a fight 
 developed and I remember once a boy from our farm was chosen 
 as the eastern champion in a fist fight. The western boy gave 
 him an awful licking. He blubbered all the way home, some two 
 miles, and as we trudged along by his side we all thought the 
 world had about come to an end. On the other hand, as this boy 
 had bullied the small chaps for a long time he did not get much 
 
 [19] 
 
OLD DAYS RECALLED 
 
 sympathy in the following days. The village was the center of 
 an agricultural community, pure and simple. Farmers, stewards, 
 shepherds, ploughmen, women workers — bondagers, they were 
 called in those days — made up ninety per cent of the working 
 people. Large families were the order of the day. No race 
 suicide here. They were a grand stamp. The men well built, 
 above the average height, the women strong, healthy, vigorous, 
 and they in turn produced children who grew up like father and 
 mother. Of luxury there was none, of wholesome food scarcely 
 enough. The clothes of the father descended to the boys, those 
 of the mother to the daughters, and even then in large families 
 there was scarce enough to go round. Many an old suit or worn 
 dress my mother handed over to the folks at the Raw, and in a 
 few days it appeared, or at least a part of it, at Whitsome school. 
 
 As I look back on those days I scarcely know how the people 
 lived. There was a fine old character called Nannie Tait who 
 had been left a widow with a half dozen sons, more or less. The 
 eldest son drove a pair of horses, and the second boy also worked, 
 the others went to school. As we came home at night and passed 
 their humble cottage, boy like I lingered with them. By the 
 fireside was a pot of potatoes simmering, fine mealy spuds they 
 were. When the boys appeared the mother mashed them up, put 
 in a pat of butter, some salt and pepper, placed the pot in the 
 center of the floor and there spoon in hand we dived into this 
 dish. That was their supper. In the morning they had por- 
 ridge, at noon a piece of bannock, and sometimes a flitch of 
 bacon. 
 
 Those scenes have left an indelible impression on my mind. 
 As I write they seem a moving picture before my eyes. In the 
 morning, you left the pleasant house and, gathering neighbor 
 boys and girls as you went along, we looked like a young army 
 when we reached the village and marched through to the school. 
 Sometimes I rode on a Shetland pony instead of walking. That 
 pony had a hard job. It generally had to carry two boys and 
 a lot of others hung on to it. Sometimes it lay down, occasionally 
 turned sharply round and ran homewards. Anyway, it managed 
 to get quit of its burden and in this way registered many a kick 
 against injustice. The village itself was ever interesting. It con- 
 sisted of one street and intermittently ran for nearly a mile. 
 
 [20] 
 
OLD DAYS RECALLED 
 
 There was nothing romantic about it. In old days I suppose it 
 was a meeting place for people to trade, barter their goods before 
 the days of money changing. Away back in those days of barter 
 it was the central spot to do business at. I often smile at the 
 way people talk against Wall Street, the Chicago Board of Trade 
 or the Stockyards. They are merely the places people find it 
 convenient to trade at. You must have central points at which 
 to do business as Venice had its Rialto, And so at the above 
 point there was a blacksmith, carpenter's and baker's shops. Old 
 Willie Smith, who had a wooden leg, kept a grocery store, Jimmy 
 Grieve, the shoemaker, also kept a public house, one trade not 
 being enough for his wants. There were two carpenters in the 
 village, while Tom Brown the roadman lived there and radiated 
 from that point for miles aroimd. The school and the auld 
 kirk with its manse and a farm at each end made up the hamlet. 
 It stands there today as it did fifty years ago. Most of the 
 neighbor villages have declined, but this one, never having had 
 a boom, stands the test of time. 
 
 My next essay in the way of education was at Duns. This 
 place was not the legal, but the commercial capital of Berwick- 
 shire, although in these latter days it is both. It is a sleepy old 
 town, resting under the shadow of the Lammermoor hills, but 
 it is substantial, well built and around it are many beautiful 
 country houses. It is the reputed birthplace of Duns Scotus, 
 one of the most learned men of the 12th and 13th centuries. In 
 my days James Wood was his prototype, so far as learning was 
 concerned. Wood was one of a large family who had been 
 brought up in a shepherd's shieling by an upright, skillful father. 
 Several of his brothers made names for themselves, but to me Old 
 Cuddie, as we irreverently called him, was the center of interest 
 for four years. He was a big man, physically and mentally, but 
 inclined to be lazy and careless, more especially about his money 
 matters. Withal that, he could ding (to use a local phrase) a lot 
 of information into your head. He had all the characteristics of 
 a first class dominie. He was well up in his subjects, very 
 domineering in the class room, a bit of a tyrant, inclined to 
 favoritism, versed in invective, which he used with more freedom 
 than discretion. He was honest, but he lacked judgment. Those 
 faults were fortunately left behind in the school-room, and in 
 
 [21] 
 
OLD DAYS RECALLED 
 
 the house and on the playground he was affable, pleasant and com- 
 panionable, a bit of a Bohemian, loving in moderation his glass 
 and reveling in a good song. In the fast passing years I often 
 think of him and believe with his abilities he deserved a better 
 field. He had about twenty boarders, mostly farmers' sons 
 from the vicinity and about the same number of day scholars 
 from the town. His work was not in vain, for from his school 
 many a man went into the world and made his mark. 
 
 In this school, as in most others, you had to fight your way. 
 All boys were equal and you soon found your place. It took a 
 fight occasionally to define your standing. You got lessons in 
 self-reliance and that fighting spirit which if used with judgment 
 in after Hfe is invaluable. In the school room you got a general 
 smattering of everything. You came away from the place a 
 sort of Jack-of-all-trades and master of none. Specialties there 
 were few, generalities in plenty and for the business man 
 probably the last state of affairs is better than the first. You have 
 foundations on which you can build in the long days to come. 
 
 Dear Old Cuddie, with boyish tricks we oftimes tried your 
 heart! And yet memory steals with pleasure back to those days 
 when we robbed an orchard, skated over the lake among the 
 stately woods at Dims Castle or threw a fly over the sparkling 
 waters of the Whiteadder. Take me back to those days, touch 
 with gentle fingers the harp of youth, let me hear once again the 
 notes that float across the mellow moorlands whose silence is 
 only broken by the curlew's screams and the challenge of the 
 blackcock. 
 
 After four years at the above place, I was sent to Abbey 
 Park, St. Andrews, where James Smeaton, a prince among 
 disciplinarians, held undisputed sway. There were other masters, 
 other pawns upon the board, but everything revolved round the 
 old man, as we called him. If a father had a boy who was a real 
 hard case, he generally landed at this school. It was a sort of 
 factory for purifying sinful boys, for taking the kinks out of 
 crooked human sticks, and after a year in this house of boyish 
 correction you came out as near perfect as himian hands could 
 make you. 
 
 Smeaton believed in the rod and he sometimes wielded it 
 with fiendish glee. Some boys got it every day, others escaped. 
 
 [22] 
 
OLD DAYS RECALLED 
 
 Fortunately, I was in the latter category. He had three sets 
 of leather tawse — heavy, heavier, heaviest, and they were used 
 as follows: in fall, spring and summer. In this case the last 
 stage was worse than the first. This great master, and I use the 
 adjective advisedly, was a human dynamo, a sort of mogul engine 
 with a roller in front which mangled you into shape mentally 
 and morally. He was a short, thick set man, a little bit bow- 
 legged, with a wondrous head set on a mighty neck and broad 
 shoulders. He picked up an average boy and shook him as a 
 Scotch terrier does a rat. He believed in lots of exercise and 
 plenty of good plain food, and after that, work. It was no place 
 for loafers. His methods, his wonderful versatility, were an 
 inspiration. He was a bom leader with courage, skill, determi- 
 nation, and he loved the turmoil of a hundred boys struggling 
 to attain the goal he ever kept in their view. Once while I was 
 there a neighbor school sent a challenge for us to play our seniors 
 at football. "No," said the old man, "we won't try you at 
 football, but if you want a match at mathematics, come along 
 next Saturday morning," Every Saturday forenoon from eleven 
 to twelve o'clock we had mental arithmetic. The most of his 
 teachings I have forgotten but the above. I have retained since 
 then my ability to calculate quickly, not absolutely correct, but 
 just near enough to grasp propositions and decide on them long 
 before the clerk by my side can work them out with paper and 
 pencil. It is an asset which has been of the greatest use, more 
 especially in the banking line. 
 
 I never saw the old man again. Years after, thinking of 
 the benefits I reaped at his school, I started out to visit St. 
 Andrews and call upon him. Too late. In passing through 
 Edinburgh I opened the "Scotsman," the great daily of the 
 Scotch metropolis. There, among the deaths, was James Smea- 
 ton's name. Towards the end he had much sorrow and became 
 acquainted with grief. 
 
 Fifteen years ago I went back to St. Andrews and had a 
 glimpse of the old place. It seemed small in comparison with 
 the castle of youthful days. Then I wandered roimd to look at 
 the ruins of the old cathedral and the Abbey and the Castle. 
 Here Wishart suffered at the stake. Cardinal Beaton was mur- 
 dered as a fitting revenge. There are a thousand memories 
 
 [23] 
 
OLD DAYS RECALLED 
 
 connected with them, the most gruesome the bottle dungeon, 
 which if it could speak would unfold many a tale of woe and 
 fearful cruelty. The prisoner who crossed the Bridge of Sighs 
 in Venice never came back. And so here, close to the hoarse roar 
 of the North Sea, was a grave where captives wept and suffered 
 a living death. 
 
 [241 
 
Leicester-Cheviot Sheep 
 
 Farmer's Daughters and Pet Lambs 
 
 Cutting Hay 
 
^umfaf r WlftBt 
 
 "111 fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, 
 Where wealth accumulates, and men decay; 
 Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade, 
 A breath can make them, as a breath has made; 
 But a bold peasantry, their country's pride. 
 When once destroyed, can never be supplied." 
 
 MY early life was spent among the peasantry of the 
 Borders. From them I imbibed much of the love of 
 nature, a great deal of the folklore that descended 
 unwritten from one generation to another, and further still 
 fathomed those wells of sympathy which are foimd in simple 
 hearts and forms that outwardly look rough and ragged. Joe 
 Whitey, alias Joseph Whiteman, the Homdean tailor, clothed 
 them in a rather rude way; the material was good, but the cut 
 was not a la Poole or Tautz, yet beneath those homemade gar- 
 ments there were hearts of gold beating true to hearth and 
 home. They were devoted to the land. Long years of healthy 
 toil, of fair treatment, of somewhat scanty food, of caution 
 and conservatism, had wedded them to the soil, had grafted them 
 almost to their native parish. 
 
 Things are changing now. The railroad, the expansion of 
 indMstrial concerns, the natural unrest, the present war, the tele- 
 graph and telephone are leading up to a shifting of the population 
 of the Borders, as in other places, but at the time I write of, the 
 old way of son succeeding father, filling the gaps made by merci- 
 less nature, was still in force. My own ancestors lie in many 
 graveyards; a radius of fifty miles would cover the district, how- 
 ever, where their last resting places are, most of them within 
 sound of the murmuring Tweed. 
 
 And so it came about that I grew up among old hands who 
 had grown grey in the service, whose sons ahnost unconsciously 
 took their fathers' places. The daughters married sons of the 
 neighbors. "As the old cock crowed, the young one learnt." 
 My grandfather, who farmed a place in Berwickshire called 
 Dykegatehead, a fine farm in the How of the Merse, had a 
 
 [25] 
 
OLD DAYS RECALLED 
 
 steward, foreman we call him in this country, by the name of 
 Mabon. Those Berwickshire peasants are as a rule big men, 
 great of statvire, burly of form, somewhat slow of movement, but 
 honest in their work and loyal to their employer. Old Tom 
 Mabon, as we used to call him, was a small man, nervous, rather 
 excitable, an indomitable worker, with a genius for handling and 
 directing his employes. But he had a failing — he had an affinity 
 in John Barleycorn. 
 
 In 1839 my family moved to Kerchesters, near to Kelso, and 
 there the Mabons went also. Then it was a wild unkempt sort 
 of place, a lot of moorland covered with heather and whins, little 
 drainage and wretched fences. Here old Tom had unlimited 
 scope for his energy. The tenant was hard pressed for money, 
 for times were hard, but as my father used to say of those days, 
 "they swattered through." But when the hour of triumph 
 came, when neat hedges divided big square fields, when tile 
 drains carried away surplus water and the place bloomed with 
 clover and was golden with grain, the pleasure of an evening at 
 Sprouston Boat House, which held a license then for the sale of 
 liquors, was too much for old Tom. So at last tenant and servant 
 parted. My grandfather, a blunt old man, used often to say 
 that he made a mistake, that Tom with all his faults was better 
 than his successors sober. 
 
 On the death of his grandfather, my father became tenant 
 of the farm of Winfield and in his migration from Kerchesters to 
 this place, Aleck Mabon, one of the sons of the above, went with 
 him to fill the place of steward. He died there in 1890 and 
 closed up a Ufe of sixty-six years serving the same family. A 
 marvelous record, but not unusual in those days. All aroxmd, I 
 think he was the best practical agriculturalist I ever met. Like 
 his father, he was a small man, wiry, with wondrous energy. 
 
 Having married twice, he had a large family. His first wife 
 I do not recollect, but his second was, before her marriage, a 
 maid in our house. She was the opposite of her husband, large, 
 never excited, fond of innocent gossip, with wonderful executive 
 ability. Her whole soul and being were wrapt up in "Mabon," 
 as she always called her husband, whereas "Mabon" had the 
 farm first in mind and the family came next. Many a talk my 
 father gave him on this subject, and while at the time he prom- 
 
 [26] 
 
OLD DAYS RECALLED 
 
 ised to be good, he soon fell from grace and began worrying 
 over his crops and stock. He had 523 acres of very stiff land to 
 manage. The want of a shower or too much rain did incalculable 
 damage. Then, like every farmer, he wanted it to rain on the 
 hay land and keep dry while he was making his turnip crop. 
 
 It was eighteen miles from our home place to this farm and 
 my father, who always rode a bit of blood, made the journey in 
 a little over two hours. His first place of call was the steward's 
 house and he generally passed a few words with the wife and got 
 the news of the week's work. If things were going badly on the 
 farm, the news was soon conveyed to the master. "Aye, maister, 
 Mabon's fair aff his heid. There's nae livin' wi' him, he's sae 
 ficky." And yet withal he was cool as a cucumber in his land 
 management. He was patient, watchful, never missing a point. 
 After rain, when the soil was dry above but glue below, it was a 
 great temptation to commence work, or when it was a period of 
 drought there was a desire to lay off and do very little, but Mabon 
 always seemed to know the moment to strike the farm anvil. 
 Looking back, it seemed to be instinct. He was a master in the 
 art. He seemed always to anticipate the weather. He was 
 always ready for imtoward events, and was seldom caught in a 
 tight place. He drove his force of men, women and children 
 when necessary, and they responded to his efforts. Then as a 
 workman, whether it was ploughing, sowing grain, singling 
 turnips, building stacks or any other work, he might have had 
 an equal, but no superior, in the neighborhood. He had a further 
 gift. As a manager of live stock he had few equals. 
 
 The farm steward in those regions, as a rule, is not much of 
 a stocksman, but "Mabon" knew this business from the groimd 
 up. And so he lived, upright, honest, a bit talkative if he got a 
 glass too many, rich in experience as a farmer, a fine judge of 
 character, seldom keeping a poor ploughman, training many a 
 boy into a splendid man, fearing no one, not even his minister. 
 To sit at his feet was an inspiration, absorbing his knowledge, the 
 result of long experience under summer suns and winter snows. 
 
 Another Mabon (John the groom) I have written of many 
 times. He had neither the tenacity nor ability of his brothers, 
 but he was a grand type of the family servant. While brought 
 up on the farm of Kerchesters,- he wandered from it in early 
 
 [27] 
 
OLD DAYS RECALLED 
 
 youth and my first recollection of him is when he came to my 
 father's service in the early sixties. He stayed for many years, 
 acting as groom and gardener. Unfortimately both for him and 
 us, his family as they grew up wished a change and left. Every 
 time John met my father or mother he began to blubber, and 
 after a few years he came back and remained till he died. While 
 he was a sort of Jack-of-all-trades and master of none, he was the 
 most faithful, honest and loyal man I ever knew. 
 
 And yet another Mabon spent his early days with us, and in 
 after years came to Kerchester as steward. He stayed ten or 
 twelve years and he was a good deal of a stormy petrel. He was 
 an able man, probably in certain lines the best man in his business 
 I ever came across. Added to marvelous energy he was quick, 
 decisive, with keen intuition. 
 
 I had been only a few months on the farm when at Whit- 
 sunday, 1868, he appeared upon the scene. For several years 
 before my grandfather's death he had an excellent man for 
 steward, whose abilities, however, lay in another direction than 
 herding ploughmen and looking after general farm work. After a 
 year with my father he resigned and "Jim," with a great reputation 
 for handling a big holding, came like a meteor upon the scene. 
 
 I will never forget the first morning he took command. He 
 swept every one aside, and in a blustering way gave directions 
 right and left. Having been born on the place and worked 
 there in his youth, he knew every field and its peculiarities. We 
 were making turnips in the "Acre" field, called so because in old 
 days the weavers and other villagers of Sprouston had each an 
 allotment there. Many of the ploughmen were new to the place 
 and all of them strange to the steward. Robbie Herkiss (of 
 whom more hereafter) had come as woman steward. It was a 
 new army and the way it was drilled, started and rapidly went 
 to work, opened my eyes. My father had instructed me to be in 
 the field a few minutes before six o'clock to help the new organ- 
 ization to get into working order, but the new steward never 
 asked for any help or suggestions. He had his mind made up 
 what to do, and he did it. I went back to my breakfast at the 
 house highly indignant, and was not slow to tell my father about 
 the methods of the new man, but it only drew out the remark, 
 "Jim was always that way and ever will be. You can't teach an 
 
 [28] 
 
OLD DAYS RECALLED 
 
 old dog new tricks," or something to that effect. The misfortune 
 of this aggressive ability was that he was continually quarreling 
 with his employes, and very often with his employer. He failed 
 to get the best that was in the farm hands and it kept the master 
 constantly watching for outbreaks that were embryo strikes. 
 Withal, the work went forward fast and furiously. Every night 
 at eight-thirty Jim came to my father's library where the work of 
 the day was discussed and that of the following day was laid out. It 
 was marvelous how difficulties dissolved, what tricks were turned, 
 how the labor of man, woman and horse was economized. In 
 those days a man's wage was approximately seventy-five cents 
 per day, a woman's forty cents, and a boy of fifteen got probably 
 twenty-five cents. As there were ten ploughmen, two shepherds, 
 twelve women, three or four boys and several orra men, such as 
 woman steward, byremen, spadesman, etc., and as all these folks 
 had separate capabilities, there was a wide field for organization. 
 Every man, woman and child's qualifications were weighed in 
 the scale and utilized accordingly. 
 
 I look back on those hours as the greatest educational 
 moments of my life. Generally these evening discussions were 
 peaceable and quiet, but occasionally they ended in a verbal 
 shindy. My father scarcely ever lost his temper, but if matters 
 kept going wrong the steward and he had it out and I was the 
 witness. As old Tom and my grandfather parted, so Jim and my 
 father did likewise. The steward and his family took a small 
 farm and I believe did well. I doubt, however, if my father was 
 ever so well served as in the years when this rough and tumble 
 but able and honest man was with him. Those Mabons were the 
 best types of the Border peasantry. They had their faults like all 
 of us, but they were able and keen, masters of their business. 
 Free Kirkers and Radicals, but loyal to their employers, to king 
 and country. 
 
 As said above, in Jim Mabon's time Robert Herkiss was the 
 woman steward. He looked after and guided the dozen young 
 women, who were a great working asset of the farm. Those girls 
 began their outdoor farm Ufe when about sixteen or seventeen 
 years of age, and they were marvelously clever at their work. At 
 most work they were more than the equals of the men, and much 
 more active in lighter work. 
 
 [29] 
 
OLD DAYS RECALLED 
 
 Robbie had entered my father's service about 1856. He 
 came as a ploughman. Originally he had been a quarry man, 
 but the wages paid were not adequate to support a man, wife and 
 six children. Thirty-six cents a day was almost starvation. As 
 a ploughman, while paid partly in kind, he earned in those days 
 about sixty cents a day and he began to prosper in a small way. 
 He left after a few years and went to a neighboring farm. Then 
 he came back in the above position and remained till he retired 
 from active work. He was a tall, active man, with a fine head 
 set on broad shoulders. He was a hard worker, with fine execu- 
 tive ability and if he had not been elected for a Border ploughman 
 and eventually woman steward, he would have shone in any line 
 of life. He was a fine scholar and historian, not in the light of a 
 college professor, but having in his early youth mastered the 
 "three R's," he had educated himself. He knew the Bible almost 
 by heart and could quote copiously from it. He had Boston's 
 Fourfold State at his finger ends, and he had read deeply on other 
 subjects. By the side of his bink (china closet) was a well 
 selected library. The volumes were well thumbed and had been 
 read many times. In his spare hours he was a grand man to 
 have a "crack" with. He was broad in his views and although a 
 strong church man he had broken away from the rigid Presby- 
 terianism that in those days held the Scotch peasant in its grip. 
 His imagination led him away into religious flights that publicly 
 expressed would have put a heathenish brand on his brow. 
 
 In an argument on any subject he was a hard nut to crack, 
 and in a quiet way he loved a political or religious discussion. 
 He was too much for his neighbors, and even Jim Cowan, our old 
 shepherd, who had an acid yet humorous tongue, had generally 
 to call for mercy when Robbie, training his guns loaded with 
 facts drawn from history and events of his own time, fired broad- 
 sides in the wordy battle. 
 
 In summer nights, after his supper, we used to meet and 
 wander over the clover fields or cross the turnip drills where he and 
 his workers had spent many hours, first singling the plants, then 
 clearing away with hoes the weeds which the horse grubber had not 
 reached. He gloried in a clean field of roots and from the time the 
 seed was sown till he and his girls pulled, topped and tailed the crop, 
 he kept an eye on the various fields that had been under his care. 
 
 [30] 
 
OLD DAYS RECALLED 
 
 In his work he took continual pleasure. He watched how 
 nature evolved from the soil generous crops, how in milk white 
 hedge rows the twittering birds built their little homes and 
 reared their young, how the bursting bud became a glorious leaf 
 and from under frozen snows the brown grass became green again 
 and the hoarse croak of the rook in winter was forgotten when in 
 the long wondrous nights of June the lark, with rapturous note, 
 made earth and sky resoimd with music. 
 
 When I look back, Robbie fills in my eye Valiant in the 
 Pilgrim's Progress. His foibles, his sins, if he had any, are left 
 behind in the vista of time. His finer qualities, his sterling 
 honesty, his splendid loyalty, the deep mystery of his religion, his 
 love of nature, his wealth of human kindness — those remain 
 written deep on the page of memory, a royal rose in an old- 
 fashioned garden that was bom and bloomed and faded, and left 
 behind it an incense that still remains after many days. 
 
 In his home Robbie had an opposite, for Eppie his wife was 
 a woman of little education. She had raised a large family and 
 in their years of poverty there was ingrained into her natiure a 
 thriftiness which developed year by year. Her house was always 
 well kept, but she kept a strong hold on the purse strings. She 
 had read little and traveled less, but she was an inveterate 
 gossip and she knew all "the clash o' the Raw." She looked 
 upon all foreigners as being either black or yellow. When I took 
 back a Canadian wife after some years' absence from Scotland, 
 the good woman, who was sitting on her doorstep, got a glance at 
 the carriage that was conveying us from the depot to the house. 
 After a good look she ran back to her fireside and informed her 
 husband in a very excited tone: "Aye, Robbie, Mrs. John is no' 
 a black after a'." When the story got out, Robbie had to laugh 
 with the others. 
 
 [31J 
 
Feeding Ewes and Larabs in Sprinj^ 
 
 Coming Out of Farm Yard 
 
 Washing Sheep 
 
"O Scotia; my dear, my native soil! 
 For whom my warmest wish to Heaven is sent, 
 Long may thy hardy sons of rustic toil 
 Be blest with health and peace and sweet content." 
 
 FIFTY years ago the Border peasantry lived very frugally. 
 The further from the railroads and large towns, the more 
 simple were their lives. Of oatmeal and potatoes they had 
 plenty, pork was in every household in limited quantities, milk 
 was fairly plentiful, bread was in abimdance, but the luxuries 
 were scarce. Not knowing them, the want was not felt. 
 
 There have been great changes since, but we are writing of 
 old days. The spring of 1853 my father leased a farm on the 
 southern slopes of Lammermoor. It was away from the main 
 road and you approached up a lane, now a well made road, be- 
 twixt strips of pinewoods, the odor of which dwells in memory. 
 The farm was about 3,000 acres in extent. Once on a time it had 
 been all heather and bent. Part of it had been put under the 
 plough, but the former tenants had neglected it. They were old 
 fashioned folks, not much inclined to work, and of energy they 
 had none. The walls were tumbling down, the few drains were 
 out of commission and the whole place run down. There were 
 Cheviot sheep on the lower land. Blackfaces on the sweeping 
 moorlands of the higher elevations. 
 
 There my young days in summer time were spent among a 
 wonderful class of men, typical of old covenanting days, their 
 faith resting on the Bible, which was often in their hands. They 
 were mostly all Free Kirkers, stem, imcompromising, rich in 
 their scriptural knowledge, bigoted, narrow and yet living up 
 to their ideals. To them Sabbath desecration was anathema, 
 and hell was the only resting place for sinners and a poor 
 disturbed one at that. This leads up to a word or two of 
 explanation. 
 
 The history of Scotland has many a tale of sorrow written 
 across its pages on account of religious differences. The story of 
 the Stuarts and their Roman Catholic tendencies, the invectives 
 
 133] 
 
OLD DAYS RECALLED 
 
 of John Knox coupled with his eloquence and earnestness, the 
 deep-seated religious mysticism of the people, their love of liberty, 
 which never appeared one-sided to them, although, like the 
 Puritan in this cotmtry, it had its inconsistencies; all these 
 accumulations left in the Scottish character a strong, deep feeling 
 that ever and again broke out in turbulence against the 
 powers that ruled their church affairs. The spirit of Drum- 
 clog, of the moss hags and their caves still smoldered amidst 
 them. 
 
 The Church of Scotland endowed, but its patronage in the 
 hands of the few, was always a subject for attack by the many. 
 While it was the church of the people, its ministers were ap- 
 pointed not by them but for them by patrons who often had no 
 more to do with the congregation than the man in the moon. 
 Today it is the same in England, and they bear their burden 
 meekly, but in Scotland they rose in rebellion. First the United 
 Presbyterians went out and made homes for themselves in 1740. 
 In 1843 another great exodus took place. It came after what 
 was known as the Ten Years' Conflict. It developed men whose 
 names are inscribed deep on Scottish history. Nothing in modern 
 times, outside the realms of war, developed such a peaceful 
 revolution. Minister and congregation going hand in hand faced a 
 momentous change in their condition. The former had to move 
 his family and belongings from the pleasant home where possibly 
 he had been for years, and face the world and trust to his fol- 
 lowers providing food and shelter. All this for religious liberty. 
 The contest developed men. Into the limelight it brought 
 Thomas Chalmers, whose calm logic and far seeing- financial 
 ability built up the ways and means. By his side stood Thomas 
 Guthrie, eloquent in platform and in pulpit. Behind them, 
 firing broadsides, was Hugh Miller, author of the "Old Red 
 Sandstone," and editor of the "Witness," a paper that voiced the 
 sentiments of the party. There was no quarter given, no com- 
 promise, no charity one for another. The Free Kirk folk walked 
 out, built churches, paid their minister and worshiped according 
 to their conscience. 
 
 Seventy years have passed. The main question was settled 
 in 1874, and the Established Kirk folks elect their own minister. 
 The days of patronage are gone, only they should have been 
 
 [34] 
 
OLD DAYS RECALLED 
 
 dispensed with in 1843 and Scotland would not have been over- 
 burdened with churches which she finds hard to support in these 
 rather degenerate days of non-church going. 
 
 So at the little homestead at Wedderlie the farm folks were 
 strongly Free Kirkers, and in the dozen or fifteen years that had 
 passed since the disruption bitter feelings had not been softened 
 or differences smoothed over. As my father and mother had 
 walked out of the Old Kirk and thrown in their lot with the New, 
 I was brought up in this atmosphere of evangelical narrowness, 
 for we despised the Auld or Established Kirk and hated the 
 Roman Catholics. Unitarians were outcasts and all sects servile 
 to the devil, except the Frees and the U. P.'s. 
 
 Time has shown that in the principle of religious liberty they 
 were right, but they gained their end by stubborn fighting and 
 splendid self-denial. Outside their strong religious ideas, the 
 U. P.'s and the Frees were just like other folks in their walk and 
 daily life. They were thrifty, keen in business, and while they 
 would not swap horses on a Sunday, they would lay the founda- 
 tion for a trade next day. One of our neighbors, when the 
 season came to market his lambs, used to drive them so far 
 every Sunday afternoon towards the market which was held 
 Monday morning. This was held to be a grievous sin, but no 
 remedy was ever suggested because it would be impossible to 
 drive them in the dark after midnight when twelve o'clock 
 released your bondage from sacred forms. In fact few folks 
 knew the dividing line betwixt Sunday and Monday, for they 
 were mostly asleep. 
 
 Still I have no regrets at having spent my early days in this 
 rigid atmosphere. Whatever the world may say or think, these 
 people bom and living in humble homes, nursed among silent 
 hills and by babbling brooks, had a fine moral nature that shone 
 out in their daily life. Many of them were rich in folk lore, the 
 stories and the songs of old days, the deeds of valor in Border life, 
 the struggles of the Covenanters, the weird fancies of the Brow- 
 nies, all descending by word of mouth from one generation to 
 another, garnished by one and stripped by another, made life 
 among these people interesting to the stranger who could pierce 
 their natural reserve. As a child, I imbibed and absorbed many 
 of these tales, and naturally became a part and parcel of their 
 
 [35] 
 
OLD DAYS RECALLED 
 
 life. Those days are changed, and it is to be regretted. There 
 is a sharp reaction against the strict tenets that were a part of 
 the days before the railroad, the newspaper and cheap literature. 
 The Sabbath day, hated by the younger generation as a day of 
 penance, still looms up as a vast shadow over my life and has 
 encouraged and pushed along the flight from misguided strictness 
 to freedom of thought and possibly we run to the opposite ex- 
 treme. One thing is sure. This strict training, this discipline of 
 your mental vision, the very physical regime you had to live up to 
 is not lost in after life. It lays a sober foundation on which 
 you can build a virile moral edifice. 
 
 When my father entered on the lease of Wedderlie, he pro- 
 moted a young lad who looked after his garden and saddle horse 
 at his home place. At about twenty years of age Matthew Craig 
 became the steward (foreman) on the above farm and he spent 
 all told fifty-four years in the service, of which fifty-two were 
 passed on the Lammermoor farm. 
 
 He was a short, thick-set man, with a fine head on rather 
 roimded shoulders. He married shortly after moving from the 
 Merse to the hill country the nursemaid in our family, and 
 raised a large family who have been successful both here and in 
 the old country. When he went to this upland farm it was in a 
 straggled, run down condition. The old dykes made of tiu-f were 
 almost level, the fields were unkempt, the stock inferior, every- 
 thing in poor shape. 
 
 But a new era was coming. The tenant and his steward 
 worked together; neither of them did much by their own hands. 
 It was organization and head work that won victories in the 
 peaceful path of agriculture. The land was cleared of stones 
 and these made walls four and a half feet high, which with a 
 copestone stopped the average sheep, although there are always 
 one or two in the flock which will get over almost any obstacle. 
 Drains open and covered were freely cut, lime was driven and 
 used profusely. As if by magic crops flourished, clover fields 
 appeared and a grand class of stock grazed amid lucious grasses. 
 
 Year after year the work went on, constant, steady improve- 
 ment. It was what was known as a clever place, the soil light, 
 friable, a bit rocky and stony, but it responded to deep ploughing, 
 lime and fertilizer. Not only was the quality of the stock im- 
 
 [36] 
 
OLD DAYS RECALLED 
 
 proved, but the quantity almost doubled. Leicester-Cheviots 
 took the place of Cheviots, but on the upper hirsel Blackfaces still 
 kept their hold and proved the most profitable. Under the able 
 management of this servant, guided by my father, this farm that 
 had paid only a small rent under the former tenant, became 
 exceedingly profitable to owner and lessee. 
 
 The American Civil War raised the price of all farm products 
 in Great Britain, more especially wool and mutton, and as the 
 farm was fairly beginning about 1860 to bear the fruit of in- 
 telligent and vigorous management, the profits were very large. 
 
 The best is got out of these hill and half hill farms during the 
 first twenty-five years of their improvement. The soil for the 
 most part is thin, but after being in grass for countless years, it 
 responds quickly to such stimulants as lime and bonemeal. 
 When the first dose of these wear off, this class of land does not 
 respond readily, or at least to anything like the extent it does 
 the first time. As usual, many farmers, seeing the great profits 
 made on some farms, broke out a good deal of land which had 
 better lain in permanent pasture and never seen the plough. 
 The farm we write of, however, had a good deal of naturally rich, 
 heavy land, and to the end of our occupancy, in 1905, it produced 
 good crops. It was a soimd stock place, and sheep throve well 
 upon it; no death loss of any moment. 
 
 Many an hour the old steward, who several years ago 
 crossed the Great Divide of Ufe, and I spent together. In 
 summer days we walked across the sweet meadowlands or away 
 where the heather in purple glow was wasting its sweetness. In 
 the long evenings of June or July we caught many a trout in the 
 stream that broke in sinuous course over its bed of gravel. Or 
 perchance we bagged some rabbits round about the pinewoods 
 that skirted the grass fields near the old mansion house. But 
 those I remember best are the winter evenings by the peat fire 
 in the little sitting room of the farm. They come back as I 
 write this afternoon within sound of the sea like a winter's flood. 
 To me they were as good as the Nodes Ambrosiana of Prof. John 
 Wilson, and the Ettrick Shepherd, not so much fun and frolic, 
 no whiskey, for that was tabooed there, at least when Matthew 
 was present, but we had endless cracks, stories of the farm, deep 
 draughts from the well of experience and not a Uttle good natured 
 
 [37] 
 
OLD DAYS RECALLED 
 
 gossip that had strewn through it a lot of shrewdness. When- 
 ever a neighbor made a move out of the ordinary it was watched 
 closely. If successful, it was copied. If not, there was a lot of 
 good natured chaff. A new machine at once attracted attention, 
 and if a horse was added to the farm stud the animal had to stand 
 a lot of looking over and, incidentally, criticism. 
 
 If you happened to be at the place over a Friday night, you 
 were expected to attend the prayer meeting. To the stranger 
 within their gates this would have seemed rather a solemn affair. 
 It was a meeting similar to the fishermen of old who lived by the 
 Sea of Galilee. A quaint, simple gathering, where homespun 
 doctrines were mixed with earnestness and a wondrous show of 
 native ability. They held this meeting alternately at their 
 cottages, and over and above the dwellers at the farm, they in- 
 cluded those who dwelt at the "place," as it was called — in 
 reality the mansion house of the property, seldom visited by the 
 landlord and in my early days under a caretaker who was gardener, 
 shepherd and general factotum, his domain taking in half a dozen 
 or more grass parks that were let annually in April. 
 
 These cottages were above the average except where two 
 ploughmen lived. 
 
 To me the scene had grown familiar. The house where we 
 met had always been made tidy. You worshiped in the largest 
 room, which generally served as sitting and dining room, ofttime 
 used also as a sleeping room with an open fire for cooking and 
 heating. There were the simple ornaments over the mantel, the 
 painted china in the old-fashioned sideboard, the bedspreads 
 variegated like a flower bed, the square table with a white cloth 
 over it, the well thumbed Bible, the candles by whose dim light 
 we did our best to read the small print of the sacred book. There 
 on hardwood chairs we sat in a quiet reflective mood till the 
 dozen worshipers gathered. 
 
 Standing out like a big weather-beaten tree, towering above 
 its neighbors, was Henry Cockbum, the Lairds' man, a grand 
 specimen of the Border peasant. Gray hairs covered his noble 
 head and keen eyes shone forth "like rich jewels in an Ethiop's 
 ear." You were struck with his clear, bell-like voice, his suave 
 manner, his commanding presence, his easy dignity, a Chester- 
 field in the role of a stone dyker, a gardener or anjrthing else you 
 
 1381 
 
OLD DAYS RECALLED 
 
 chose to put him at. Fate placed him there amid.silent pine- 
 woods and green fields, for his home had both around it, and he 
 lived and died known by few but respected by all. When I 
 think of him and Matthew Craig and Willie Anderson, one of our 
 shepherds, I try to reason out how men of that caliber, when the 
 world is so bare of ability, are left to work out their own and 
 other folks' salvation far away from scenes where their person- 
 ality and talents would have made them stars of the first magni- 
 tude. When the great Book of Life is balanced beyond that 
 mysterious sea which we all must cross, will the great men with 
 noble minds and aspirations come into their own? 
 
 "But 'tis an old belief 
 
 That on some solemn shore 
 Beyond the sphere of grief, 
 Dear friends will meet once more." 
 
 Matthew Craig generally led the service. It was very simple. 
 One of the worshipers led the singing. Prayers were offered by 
 various members. A chapter of either the Old or New Testament 
 was read and remarks made upon it, ofttimes very pithy sayings 
 with similes from everyday life and the book of nature. Some- 
 times one of Spurgeon's sermons was read, but the Spurgeon in 
 the pulpit was a different thing when his words were put into 
 cold print. The mellow voice, the gentle repartee, the earnest 
 pleading of that master in the art of preaching, around whom 
 every Sabbath morning a vast concourse collected, were wanting. 
 And so with most printed sermons. The fiery eloquence of 
 Guthrie was a tame affair when put in a book, even with a catching 
 title. 
 
 The devil, gibbeted and hung up to dry about every second 
 Sxmday morning in the pleasant little Free Kirk at Westruther, 
 where most of the above folks worshiped, by the Rev. James 
 Izzett, was a vivid personal attack which woke up the congrega- 
 tion, but if you had reduced it to paper and ink it would have 
 been a disjointed and somewhat erratic oration. And so while 
 Mat's (as I still love to call him) remarks would not have stood a 
 literary test, they came from the heart and even with the lapse 
 of time they stand out for me as a beacon light upon which I can 
 keep my eye on an everlasting eternity. 
 
 (39) 
 
Blackfaced 
 
 Ewes 
 and Lambs 
 
 A Border Shepherd and Collies 
 
"Love had he found in huts where poor men lie; 
 His daily teachers had been woods and rills. 
 The silence that is in the starry sky, 
 The sleep that reigns among the lonely hills." 
 
 THIS chapter tells of my life among the shepherds. The 
 story reaches from the rich pastures of low Berwickshire 
 to the heather clad hills of Lammermoor, to the green 
 hillsides of Cheviot right up to the English .edge (boundary). 
 In this wide field you meet men of many types, nearly all of 
 them gentle, reserved men, quiet in their demeanor till roused 
 to action, faithful, loyal, with an instinctive knowledge of their 
 work, the heritage of many generations. In the hill districts 
 especially son succeeded father. It was an endless chain of 
 families in certain districts. They might change from one farm 
 to another, but they seldom left the neighborhood. 
 
 These shepherds stood at the top of the tree in the intellectual 
 hfe of the Border peasantry. Their lives lacked the rugged work 
 of the ploughmen, or the varied, distracting duties of the foremen. 
 They sailed along on a more even keel, had more time for recrea- 
 tion in the line of reading, while in the old days when like Hogg, 
 the poet of Ettrick, they had to watch their flocks, train them to 
 respect invisible boundaries, for there were no fences in those 
 days; the forefathers of the shepherds I knew in youth were, in a 
 way, learned men. 
 
 As they lay on the hillside they had time for reflection, for 
 reading, for communing with nature, for interchange of ideas 
 with their equally intelligent associates. They met on the 
 divides where their flocks grazed and many a pithy argu- 
 ment took place. There ran through the minds of these men a 
 deep religious sentiment, a thread of mysticism that was bom of 
 the Orient rather than the Occident, and withal there was in 
 their nature a lot of pawkiness and craft that some people would 
 call cunning, not of the dishonest sort, but they did not tell you 
 everything they knew in a day's journey. Their calling made 
 them inveterate gossips. They had long ears and wondrous 
 
 [41] 
 
OLD DAYS RECALLED 
 
 memories. If one of their neighbors slipped a cog there were 
 quiet reminders for years after. A sly humor ran through their 
 daily life, not bubbling over, but ever at play. Their outstanding 
 characteristics were their loyalty to their employer, to the locality 
 where they lived and the work they had in hand. 
 
 Away up in the hills, amid silent valleys or wind swept 
 edges, they saw little either of their employers or other people, 
 but they went steadily about their business. While "the eye of 
 the master maketh the cattle fat," this proverb did not hold good 
 of the what was known as the "out bye" shepherd. Left very 
 much to himself, he manifested in his own way the faithful servant. 
 
 My father often sent me out to watch the ploughman at 
 work, but the shepherd never. It was an unwritten maxim in 
 our farm life that the "herd," man or boy, needed no guardian and 
 of instruction very little. Growing up in this atmosphere, respect 
 grew into admiration and looking back to those men of the 
 Merse, and the far-off hills, with their solitary shielings, scarce 
 an instance comes to mind of one failing to make good. When it 
 came down to real skill and sheep lore, the shepherd generally 
 knew more than the master, and in an argument the former 
 generally got the best of it, if he was on known groimd. With 
 this kind of halo surrounding them, most of them admitted 
 geniuses in their walk and conversation, little wonder that born 
 and brought up among them, they probably cast over me a 
 glamor that I have been unable to dismiss or that time has even 
 changed in the slightest degree. 
 
 At Wedderlie, when I first recollect it, there lived and had 
 lived for many years, a great character called Jamie Bruce. He 
 had been shepherd on the place, but had retired, making a living 
 by cow jobbing, and he also rented a grass park from our landlord 
 where he kept a small flock of ewes. His cottage was called the 
 Braeheads. It stood above a little stream and was a but and a 
 ben. Jamie lived in the ben and the cows in the but. I have a 
 dim recollection of it burning down one morning when Jamie 
 saved his live stock but most of his furniture went up in smoke. 
 It was rebuilt as a double cottage, and the cows found another 
 home. 
 
 In those days every householder supplied a woman or boy 
 worker for the farmer, and consequently Jamie sat rent free in a 
 
 [42] 
 
OLD DAYS RECALLED 
 
 way. He hired a woman worker, bondager, as they were un- 
 fortunately named, at so much for the half year. He drew her 
 pay from the farmer and any balance coming to him provided her 
 keep and was also credited to house rent. It was a most per- 
 nicious system socially and morally, the only gainer being the 
 farmer. It was one of the customs that died hard and the funeral 
 came none too soon. As labor became better employed, women 
 did not require to leave home and stayed with their parents, 
 working from their own roof tree. 
 
 Jamie had a wealth of shepherd's lore. He lived before the 
 days of railroads, in the days when fairs were still the bartering 
 place for sheep and cattle, and when "drove" roads were still 
 open across the wild moorlands of the Border. He could tell 
 many a tale of driving stock to the old stands which are now but 
 memories. He had attended Falkirk Tryst, All Hallow Fair at 
 Edinburgh, driving stock from these points over Soutra Hill to 
 the neighborhood of Wedderlie. St. Boswells, Lammas Fair at 
 Melrose, held on the sides of the Eildons, St. James' Fair at 
 Kelso and the Pennymuir Fairs were all household words to him. 
 The auction marts killed them and nowadays they are but 
 remnants of former glories. His active life had been spent in 
 the old fashioned way. 
 
 About 1850, when he had passed his best and was partially 
 retired, he saw a new era begin. The railroad had reached within 
 eleven miles of his calf groimd. The driving days were over, the 
 locomotive did the work. The farm work, however, was the 
 same and, except for a scarcity of labor in this hill district, goes 
 on today as it did then. We got our holidays about the first 
 days of July, and as we clipped our blackfaced sheep about the 
 fourth or fifth of July, I generally saw this great event. 
 
 It was still the fashion for the neighbors to help one another, 
 and the days were arranged ahead. Consequently it was a 
 great gathering of men and dogs, and it made a mighty stir in 
 the quiet life of the farm. At sun-up the shepherds gathered on 
 the hill. The collies, like a cowboy on the round-up, took long 
 sweeps circling the sheep. When they were together it looked a 
 big flock and at last when they were driven into the buchts 
 (dividing pens) there was great confusion and an awful noise as 
 lambs and their mothers bleated in pathetic tones. The lambs 
 
 143] 
 
OLD DAYS RECALLED 
 
 had to be separated. This was a big job, as we had no dividing 
 shute in those days. They had all to be handled over the dividing 
 rails. John Whitelaw, who herded the low ground, a man of 
 great strength, used to seize a lamb in each hand and drop them 
 over the fence. And there in a close pen the poor little things, 
 worn with anxiety and missing the care of their mothers, stood 
 all day. When the mother came back stripped of her fleece and 
 white as snow, you would think they would scarce recognize her, 
 but in this case every bullet found its billet and they went con- 
 tentedly away to the hillside. 
 
 The buchts were about a quarter of a mile from the buildings. 
 In a covered shed prepared for the purpose, the shearing was 
 done. In Lammermoor all sheep while being clipped had their 
 feet tied and were lifted onto stools. These were about five feet 
 long, two feet high and about two-and-a-half feet wide. Gener- 
 ally they were made of heather turf. The floor of the big shed, 
 except where the sheep were confined by temporary hurdles, was 
 carpeted with heather turf also. There on their stools sat a 
 dozen men or more busy at work, their shears clicking and very 
 often their tongues going. They had gathered from the four 
 parts of the compass, from Flass on the west, Scarlaw and Raw- 
 bum on the north, Evelaw on the east and Cammerlaws on the 
 south. Men of great stature, wiry, a long reach of arm, shaggy 
 of hair, virile, sometimes dogmatic, but all mentally strong. 
 
 Most of their work, scanning the hill, was done in silence, 
 so when they got together there was a great interchange of ideas. 
 Just as the dawn peeped through the flickering east, Jamie Bruce 
 wended his way to the buchts, there to do his part in the day's 
 work. He donated that time to the farmer, part as friendship, 
 part as a dependent cottager, last but not least for the fellowship 
 that followed in the wake of the day's work. Bess, his collie, 
 grown old in the service, was at his heel ready to move at the 
 motion of the hand. When the ewes were penned they adjourned, 
 or at least as many as were present, to the farm house and had 
 their breakfast of porridge and milk. 
 
 What a day that was in the household! Old Nellie, the 
 housekeeper, and the other servants were almost distracted. 
 Over and above the usual meals for the household, a dozen or 
 more hvmgry shepherds had to be provided for. Breakfast from 
 
 [44] 
 
OLD DAYS RECALLED 
 
 six o'clock onwards, for the neighbor shepherds dropped in at all 
 times, lunch at ten o'clock of bread and milk, dinner about half 
 after twelve, a dram of whiskey or milk again at four o'clock, and 
 their tea after the day's work was over. What a lot of work was 
 done! 
 
 In this country we generally shear with the rib, but in 
 Lammermoor it was across it. If the sheep were in good con- 
 dition and the fleece well risen from the skin, which in a healthy 
 sheep was a delicate purple, it easily fell away from the shears 
 and was gathered up by a girl, rolled up and carried to the storage 
 place adjoining. After this there was a yell for "buist." A 
 branding iron, not red hot as on the range, but covered with 
 pitch, was carried along dripping hot tar on the heather floor and 
 stamped on the side of the sheep. The legs were untied and the 
 ewe found her way to the buchts, there to wait rather impatiently 
 till the flock was all shorn, when, as said above, lambs and 
 mothers met and went quietly to the hill. There was rejoicing 
 then as the htmgry lamb met a full udder. 
 
 I have seen busy scenes on the range when a hundred cowboys 
 with six or seven hundred horses were at work. I have watched 
 them sweep along divides, come down through dry arroyos with 
 bxmches of panting cattle, round them up, unsaddle, catch a fresh 
 horse and go to work on the herd. Sometimes we had to work 
 two herds. But in miniature these sheep shearing scenes come 
 back to memory as the busiest and merriest of gatherings. It 
 was silent sort of work round the cattle, except when a cowboy 
 gave a parting yell at some specially obstinate cow or steer that 
 refused to be cut out and at last was headed towards its special 
 bunch. 
 
 Much depends on the setting of the scene. Here under a well 
 lighted covered shed with its carpet of heather and its homemade 
 stools, the big, healthy looking men in homespun, the intelligent 
 collies, the wild homed blackfaced ewes, with soft expressive 
 eyes, the music of the shears, the merry laugh that followed a 
 good joke, the sorrow that you felt for the bleating captives, all 
 tended to an intensely interesting time for a young boy. One 
 thing followed another in rapid succession. After Jamie Bruce, 
 who had an exceedingly nippy tongue, had greeted the arrivals 
 from neighboring hillsides, reminding one delinquent who came 
 
 [45] 
 
OLD DAYS RECALLED 
 
 rather late that it was a poor time of night to come and do a 
 day's work, although it was but 8 A. M., there was sure to be a 
 collie shangie, or, in other words, a sort of free fight among the 
 dogs. 
 
 The collie is not a fighting dog, but he makes an awful fuss 
 about it, shows his teeth, but as a rule does little real harm. It 
 was soon over, but went on intermittently all day. In this con- 
 nection, I recollect the Free Kirk minister, the Rev. James Izzett, 
 coming up to see the men, who were principally attendants at his 
 church. With him was his famous Scotch terrier Bob. Bob had 
 a reputation among fighting dogs, but the collies did not know it. 
 Immediately on Bob's arrival there was considerable curiosity as 
 to his anatomy and other pecuUarities. A big collie, the sort of 
 dandy of the lot, walked all around him with his tail curled over 
 his stem. He made a feint at Bob, but he did not shift his 
 ground. 
 
 Bob had been at other meetings of this kind before and was 
 well skilled at the game. The other collies also began to evince 
 a good deal of curiosity and there must have been half a dozen 
 around him. Bob still looked unconcerned, although there was a 
 conscious gleam in his eye. Like a good general he said little but 
 thought a lot. After considerable growling from Bob, they made 
 an onslaught on him. Over went Bob, but in his mouth and with 
 his teeth fixed on it was the fore paw of the largest collie. There 
 was a yell of pain and the big dog was soon pulling away from 
 the rest, taking Bob with him. He tumbled over and over, but 
 Bob stuck like a burr. The more noise, the deeper went Bob's 
 teeth into the paw. At last he let go, the collies slunk into 
 corners and he was cock of the walk. There was no further 
 argument. 
 
 During the day there was many a breezy discussion. If 
 Wat Stobie, the old shepherd at Lanton Lees, a farm which my 
 family held for many years, was there, then there was sure to be a 
 lot of scrapping. Wat's sheep were, according to his idea, the 
 best in Lammermoor. He had a better breed of collies and as 
 these facts were stoutly upheld by the redoubtable Wat, it gave 
 rise to a lot of good natured chaff. Another favorite subject of 
 discussion took place betwixt the wet and dry contingents. 
 Bruce and Stobie agreed in one way that a dram was an excellent 
 
 [46] 
 
OLD DAYS RECALLED 
 
 thing, with most of the others opposing them. Whiskey or no 
 whiskey, these men were all sober minded, clean morally and 
 keen at their calling. 
 
 In after years, I used to attend and take part in the clippings 
 at a large Cheviot farm we got a lease of in the early seventies. 
 There we had nothing but Cheviot sheep. They had beautiful 
 fleeces, fine in quality, but deficient in weight. There was no 
 tying there, you handled them loose. After you had rounded 
 the neck you ran your shears across the rib and for the first few 
 days after it looked a bit incongruous. These shepherds were 
 just as high class as their neighbors. 
 
 It was harder work in Cheviot than in Lammermoor. It 
 was steeper, there was more bare ground and less shelter. They 
 had not the heather in such quantities and it was much more 
 difficult to grow trees there and make artificial bields, the local 
 word for shelters. 
 
 About the 15th of August we weaned our lambs from the 
 Leicester Cheviots, and this was a great occasion. We drew all 
 our sheep from the fields and the lowland hill land to the buchts 
 and there about six-thirty in the morning the weaning began. 
 Every lamb was handled by hand. First the wethers and ewes 
 were separated into big pens. Then the shott wether lambs were 
 taken and sold at home or sent to market. The tops, probably 
 four hundred head, were sent to our low country farm and 
 finished there. The top of the ewe lambs were kept for breeding 
 purposes. A neighbor farmer from the low country came up to 
 buy the balance, except the very tail end. He got up about 
 noon, looked over the bunch, and then after dinner when the 
 toddy was fairly started, bargaining began and it generally lasted 
 till he went away about four o'clock. Sometimes the bargain was 
 not struck till he was in his gig. Over and above he always took 
 a year's credit, but I guess the interest was taken care of in the 
 price. Jamie, who had been busy all morning helping the other 
 herds, generally called at the farm house in the afternoon and 
 had his drop of spirits while the discussion went on. 
 
 As I write, these days come back in vivid reality. Time 
 never seems to blur, far less blot them out. The lessons absorbed 
 amid this peasant life have been to me of imtold value. No 
 name so rich as that of experience, of living among actual scenes 
 
 [47] 
 
OLD DAYS RECALLED 
 
 and gathering honey from every flower you came across. When 
 we took over the lease of the above farm in 1853, old Willie 
 Whitelaw was the herd on the lower hirsel. After four years, his 
 son filled his shoes. He left on account of his health. A few 
 years afterwards his son came to the same place and finished out 
 the lease. For fifty-two years there was a Whitelaw at the 
 Washing House, the name of the little cottage they lived in. It 
 was the place where in old days the farm folks did their washing, 
 just as the French and ItaUans clean their clothes, etc., on the 
 Riviera. On the blackfaced hirsel Willie Anderson did duty for 
 forty-seven years, and he is still living in a green old age at the 
 village of Westruther close by the scene of his life work. 
 
 Only a week ago he wrote me a letter telling of his eighty-five 
 years and still hearty, able to attend his beloved kirk. Touch, 
 oh God, with gentle hand this servant of Thine whose work was 
 'midst the purple heather, but whose heart was ever soaring 
 upwards! 
 
 [«] 
 
Winter Scene 
 and Scotch 
 Shepherds 
 
 Shepherd 
 and Collies 
 
 Blackfaced Sheep in Winter 
 
" I was with Hercules, and Cadmus, once 
 When in a wood of Crete they bay'd the bear 
 With hounds of Sparta; never did I hear 
 Such gallant chiding; for, besides the groves. 
 The skies, the fountains, every region near 
 Seem'd all one mutual cry: I never heard 
 So musical a discord, such sweet thunder." 
 
 SPORT is intuitive to the Border people. It comes down 
 from the old reiver days when might was right and stealing 
 from your neighbor far from sinful. Mavericking in the 
 West was child's play to the manner in which the Lowland Scot 
 crossed the Border and appropriated his neighbor's cattle. My 
 forefathers used to smuggle whiskey from the little town of 
 Eyemouth to Holy Island and cache the firewater in the sands 
 near to the sacred spot where in old days prior and abbess made 
 their saintly homes. Money was the main object, but there 
 was a sporting chance about it. A boundary wall or stream 
 made a tariff fence, but years ago that disappeared. 
 
 Yet today the Scotch tongue differs from the Northumbrian 
 accent and a stranger to step from one to the other would think 
 they were different covmtries. All of this country is devoted to 
 agricultural pursuits. Outside of a few coal pits the population 
 is devoted to the plough, to live stock and the kindred industries 
 that hang around a bucolic people. As I have said in former 
 articles, simplicity is the rule among those peasants. Thrift is 
 found in the farm houses, while the landed proprietors, having 
 had a taste of London life and other world openings, have not as a 
 rule preserved their simplicity or kept their bank accounts well 
 replenished. Then there is the great middle class, the farmer, the 
 retired merchant, the well doing storekeeper, the lawyer, doctor, 
 parson, etc., who have probably more freedom and independence 
 than any other class. The grand result of this mixture of healthy, 
 simple and in most cases thrifty individuals is a splendid lot of 
 people, the backbone of a coimtry's wealth, more, still, its man- 
 hood. The city draws on it freely, gets fresh blood that in- 
 vigorates the urban population. I make these remarks leading 
 
 [49] 
 
OLD DAYS RECALLED 
 
 up to a phase of the life in those Borders which has done much to 
 keep the men and women also vigorous, stalwart and clean in 
 their habits, for genuine sport acts for the best in both the mind 
 and body. 
 
 The Border ploughman, on account of his vocation, which 
 is constant exercise with long hours, does not get much chance 
 to exercise his energies in this line. He is fond, however, of 
 playing quoits, and he is ever ready to nip a hare or rabbit when 
 he sees no danger of being caught; in fact, there is a strong streak 
 of the poaching habit in his nature, not so much for the gain as 
 the pure devilment it produces, for it is a game of chance. 
 
 This Borderland is the home of sport. It is equipped for it. 
 The town of Kelso, as I have said many a time, is a center for all 
 kinds of sport. You can hunt the fox six days a week while 
 living there. It stands by the shores of the River Tweed, a 
 salmon river of world-wide fame. Away some fifteen miles are 
 mellow moorlands, redolent of heather and grouse. In the vale 
 lands are endless coveys of partridges, an innumerable number of 
 hares and rabbits, and amid its pleasant pinewoods the beautiful 
 pheasant finds a congenial home. Then it has a labyrinth of 
 trouting streams that come wandering down from green or purple 
 hillsides, through pleasant farms, all the waters of the beautiful 
 vale falling into the North Sea at Berwick on Tweed, whose grey 
 walls and red roofs bring back memories of the sunny days of 
 youth. 
 
 At Kelso there is also a race course where in autimm days 
 touter, horse jockey, pickpocket and some other shady characters 
 mingle freely with the quiet going folks of the neighborhood who 
 turn out in gala attire. I have never understood, and I suppose 
 it will always be a sealed book to me, how a dapper duke, a 
 Scottish landlord, either peer or commoner, and his respectable 
 tenant can afford to rub shoulders with the above tarnished 
 gentry. You can't change the leopard's spots and it is impossible 
 to overturn the Britisher's love of sport. He takes a sporting 
 chance at those race meetings, both socially and morally, but he 
 goes back to business or pleasure next morning and proceeds on 
 his path sedately and with decorum. 
 
 At a Scottish farm your first introduction to a sporting 
 career is generally rat catching. There is generally a good 
 
 ISO] 
 
OLD DAYS RECALLED 
 
 terrier in your father's possession, and as he is imbued with a 
 proper spirit, you become pals and work together. I followed 
 this well worn path. When an old stack of grain was being 
 carted to the mill, the other farm boys and I were always present 
 stick in hand knocking mice on the head with "Tear 'em," our 
 terrier, watching for rats. 
 
 As every round of sheaves was pitched to the cart and we got 
 nearer the bottom of the stack, the more intense was the excite- 
 ment. The last round of sheaves was Ufted cautiously, one by 
 one. Sometimes the bottom of the stack was a regular rat pit. 
 We generally had some neighbor terriers with us and few of the 
 rats got away. If they were very numerous and a big kill was 
 expected, sheets were held round the stack and then the rat 
 had scarce a fighting chance. To us boys the rat catcher who 
 came once a year to clean up the place of those vermin was a 
 great man. He had two or three terriers, several ferrets, a lot 
 of traps, and some of them that caught rats alive, and he had a 
 sporting paraphernalia that was attractive to us country lads. 
 
 Every morning the catch of the previous day was laid out in 
 a row for my father to see and count. "Ned the Rat," one of 
 the many rat catchers whom I remember, was a hard looking 
 customer. In later life I have always compared him in my mind 
 with Dick Hatteraick in " Guy Mannering." He had a diabolical 
 look about him, and as his vocation called for silence and a soft 
 pedal, he came upon you unawares and gave you a start as if a 
 ghost had appeared. The mole catcher, on the other hand, who 
 used to work for us, was a mild mannered, prudent man, but his 
 style of sport did not appeal to the boys of the farm. 
 
 On Saturday afternoons I used to go over to a neighboring 
 farm where a boy of my age lived. He was a nephew of the 
 farmer and his maiden sisters. The farm was away from the 
 main road and was as quiet a spot as any hermit would wish for. 
 It lay on the banks of the Tweed and was a fertile spot. There 
 were rich meadow lands by the river side. The square farm 
 house stood in a pleasant garden full of old fashioned flowers and 
 guarded by stone walls where peach and apricot trees were care- 
 fully trained. Inside there was a trim, rather prosaic drawing 
 room with a bank of house flowers that spread incense through it. 
 This was seldom used, only when very important folks came to 
 
 [51] 
 
OLD DAYS RECALLED 
 
 call, and a fire w^s only built on state occasions. The useful 
 room of the house was a good sized dining room which was also a 
 sitting room and library. There the family congregated and 
 spent their days. It was a sunny, cheerful place with old fashioned 
 furniture, chairs and sofa of horsehair and a great mahogany 
 sideboard. Over the mantle-piece was a row of glass jars with 
 hysons in them. In the bow window was an iron and wire stand 
 with fuchias, geraniums, etc. 
 
 In this scented air canaries sang and the two dear old ladies 
 who lived with a very quiet reserved bachelor brother, whiled 
 away a quiet and somewhat uninteresting life. The outside 
 folks would call it so, but they had their pleasures, their 
 hopes and an everlasting faith which they put to a strong 
 test every Sabbath morning by riding to church in a "noddy," 
 a springless carriage that hurt your body but helped 
 digestion. 
 
 A ravine ran through the farm. Here and by the river bank 
 were lots of rabbits. The boy had a fond companion in a big red 
 curly coated retriever. This dog and our terrier were great 
 cronies and they understood the game of one hunting a bunny 
 out of a thicket which had a runway into it and one out. The 
 terrier bolted the rabbit and the big dog got it. Then we would 
 carry a spade and occasionally dig a burrow. Altogether we had 
 a glorious time. In spring we would rob nests, blow eggs and 
 otherwise destroy the homes of defenceless birds. 
 
 One nest I could never rob. The gentle lark I always 
 passed up. The memory of its song overnight still lingered with 
 me. This bird of the wilderness, as James Hogg expresses it, 
 appeals to your heart and makes it sinful to touch its cosy nest. 
 But the carrion crow, the magpie, the hawk and such other birds' 
 nests were ruthlessly harried. What chances we took climbing 
 those trees! All too soon we were trained to use a gun and it is 
 second nature to handle one. 
 
 The average American boy misses this training. By the age 
 of twelve I was getting expert with a double barrelled shot gun. 
 We first got hold of a single barrel very indifferent fowling 
 piece, and then when our fathers were absent we borrowed 
 their guns for the day. And so I grew up like the neighbor 
 boys with a perfect command of firearms, and although never 
 
 [52] 
 
OLD DAYS RECALLED 
 
 a crack shot, I can still make a decent performance on the moor 
 or at the end of a wood when pheasant fly fast down wind. 
 
 But in my early days the best, and those that are still pendant 
 in im mind, were spent by the little streams that come meander- 
 ing down from the moss hags of Lammermoor and Cheviot. 
 Since tjien I have wandered by their side, waded or jumped across 
 them. \They look small and puny and what were waterfalls then 
 are less\than three or four feet in reality, except at the College 
 Liim, near to Heathpool, Northumberland. But a glamor hangs 
 around t^se days. 
 
 ManjAa morning have I walked from Wedderlie to Dye- 
 water, a distance of four or five miles. How fine the air felt, 
 how springy^the turf or heather; the air was alive with the wor- 
 shiping lark Or the screaming curlew and then at the Watch Water 
 you wanted to put up your rod and have a try by its whispering 
 streams and Intle pools, but with stem resolve you kept going 
 ahead to the larger stream. You half ran, half walked when you 
 had mounted thfe divide betwixt the two streams, and had your 
 head downhill. %low you was the sinuous river like a thread 
 of silver, passing bglow a whinstone bridge past a little cottage 
 away among hills tliat echoed the cry of the cuckoo. 
 
 Today, as I writt. the whole scene is moving before me. The 
 sparkling stream tha^ame rolling in gentle cadence over boulders, 
 lashing itself into wavtfets that had fringes of silver foam, then 
 as if tired of its mad\ourse, it sunk into quiescent pools and 
 swirled gently against some worn cliffs that had stood the wear 
 of countless ages. Then'it broke from there over another reach, 
 making music as it wenti^ By its banks was a wealth of wild 
 flowers and the air was a]^e with dragon and butterflies. In 
 those days the stream was h\l of trout and an expert fisherman 
 could always get a decent ba&ket. Generally in the morning we 
 would fish up stream, using\orms as bait. You threw your 
 line above a big rock, it circle^ round and it fell into somewhat 
 still water. Generally a good sizfed trout was ready for it. Few 
 of them were big enough to need playing with, you brought 
 them to the bank side and then je^ed them on to it. In a clear 
 stream this style of fishing is deadly, but I never cared for it so 
 much as when in the afternoon with a westerly breeze we fished 
 down stream with fly. 
 
 [53] 
 
OLD DAYS RECALLED 
 
 It was no great trick to kill fifty or sixty trout in a day, or 
 even up to a hundred. It was sport and at the same time it 
 kept the table going in an out of the way place where a butcher 
 was unknown. Fishing is rather a selfish sport. You have to 
 be alone and wish to be left severely so. You are jealous if you 
 see a neighbor plying his rod near you. Away by Dye side you 
 had it to yourself. Towards afternoon you dropped into Jamie 
 Smith's comfortable cottage at Byrecleuch and had a cup of 
 tea to hearten you on the way home. 
 
 Jamie was the Duke of Roxburgh's head shepherd at the 
 above place. It was a sort of mutual admiration society up 
 there. The Duke had a good servant and Jamie had a very 
 good and indulgent employer. They only met about the 12th 
 of August, grouse shooting time, and had very little occasion to 
 quarrel. Jamie was a grand crack and many a pleasant hour 
 I spent with him. 
 
 Shooting, in a way the counterpart of fishing, is exactly 
 opposite in one respect. It is a congenial sport. You seldom 
 go alone. The company is a part of the play. The result is 
 that it is thoroughly unselfish. There is an etiquette about it, 
 a code of sporting manners which you must acquire when you 
 are young. I was fortunate in imbibing this from a gamekeeper 
 who knew his business from A to Z. I always look back at his 
 guidance and guardianship in this field as one of the big assets 
 of my life, both in business and in sport, for if you know the 
 latter it will strongly influence the former. 
 
 In the days we write of hares and rabbits were still reserved 
 by the landlord for his own shooting and trapping. In other 
 words, while the tenant fed them, the laird got the sport and 
 revenue. This led up to endless disputes and heartburnings. 
 On the Roxburgh estate the rabbits were not specially reserved 
 and the tenants could always shoot them for pleasure and the 
 pot. As many of the British landlords were impecunious, game 
 became a source of revenue instead of what it was intended to 
 be, a sporting asset. 
 
 A tenant might take a nineteen-year lease of a place carrying 
 at his entry a fair head of ^ame. They might then be allowed 
 to multiply and become a great btu-den on the place. The pro- 
 prietors of land could not see the coming storm. Slowly but 
 
 [54] 
 
OLD DAYS RECALLED 
 
 surely public opinion centered against them and laws were passed 
 which gave the tenants an inalienable right to the ground game. 
 Now the landlord has the feathers, the tenant the fur, but even 
 yet with the rage for game there is much trouble where pheasants 
 are hand reared in great numbers and turned loose at a certain 
 age to feed themselves. But so far as we were concerned, we en- 
 joyed all the freedom necessary to follow up our sporting pro- 
 clivities with the gun. In the long summer evenings when the 
 twilight came slowly, after the farm work was over, many a 
 score of young rabbits came to hand, and in winter when the 
 larder was empty we used the ferrets in the burrows and this 
 class of snap shooting, as they darted from one hole to another, 
 provided splendid sport. 
 
 The fox, however, is the animal that provides the sport of 
 Merrie England and Scotland also. One winter's day at Whit- 
 some school, when the midday hour had set us free, the hounds 
 with their followers, most of them in scarlet, had passed near by. 
 Along with some other boys, we started off. No more school 
 that day, and next morning a severe lecture from the kind old 
 master. He gave me a letter to my father, but I suppose he had 
 been there himself as nothing more was said. Then, and even today, 
 when I see a fox it sets me afire, at least the sporting blood in me, 
 and when he breaks cover, I have to follow Mr. Jorrock's advice 
 and count twenty before holloaing to the huntsman that he is away. 
 
 My hunting career was begun on the Shetland pony that 
 carried me to school, and my first professor in the art was the 
 great Lord Wemyss. He was a rich East Lothian proprietor 
 who devoted his Ufe to sport. He was not only an Al shot, but 
 he was a fearless rider, hunting his own hounds till he was nearly 
 eighty years of age. He was a man of marvelous activities and 
 immensely popular. He hunted four days a week, Monday and 
 Friday in North Northumberland, and Tuesday and Saturday in 
 Berwickshire. Thus he took in both sides of the Border. His 
 hounds made the welkin ring amid the scenes where the Bride 
 of Lammermoor played her part, while southwards he drew 
 Flodden Hill, passing by many a time the well of Sybil Grey, 
 and many a time his pack finding at Yearle whin, ran straight 
 to big Cheviot where the fox could get into rocks that defied 
 any earth stopper to evict him. 
 
 [55] 
 
OLD DAYS RECALLED 
 
 In the realms of sport nothing comes up to riding to hounds. 
 It is the most fascinating of pursuits and develops traits in a 
 man's character that might otherwise lie dormant, for you must 
 have courage, resolution, coolness, patience and a knowledge 
 that can only be gained by experience. Personally, I have 
 always had to labor under the great disadvantage of a heavy 
 weight. The professional huntsman weighs about 140 pounds, 
 while my normal weight is 225 pounds. This is a tremendous 
 handicap with the result that my constant aim was to offset it 
 by skill as much as possible. You caimot cure, but you can 
 alleviate this burden of avoirdupois. 
 
 The aim of the good horseman when riding to hounds is to 
 be near as possible to the pack and yet never press them. A 
 hound when on the line of a fox is easily distxurbed. He must 
 be allowed to work out his own part of the business and should 
 never be interfered with till the huntsman sees he is fairly at 
 fault, when aid is necessary. With me, therefore, it was necessary 
 to watch closely the leading hounds of the pack, if they were 
 running fast to guess more or less what direction they were point- 
 ing. This is not a good plan for the ordinary well mounted 
 man, but a heavy weight has to cut corners. His eye must 
 ever be roaming over the country in front of him to search out 
 the weak spots in any big fence that lies in his way. There 
 come times when he must charge big places, trusting a good deal 
 to luck in getting over, and you generally do get over. A very 
 small error in judgment loses you a lot of ground, therefore amid 
 all this excitement you must be cool, calculating, ever edging 
 to or from the pack as occasion requires, and then when necessary 
 turn away from nothing that is jumpable. 
 
 Till I was seventeen years of age I kept on riding a pony 
 or a cob. It will be forty-seven years ago October that my 
 father gave me a horse and my boyhood days were left behind. 
 Those wondrous days that come but once in a life time! 
 
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