Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography | Page 6

the beldames when--
"Louder and louder the piper blew, Swifter and swifter the dancers flew."
After the old man had finished his recital, I asked him whether he had ever seen the poet. "Only aince," he replied. "That was one day when he was ridin' on a road near here. I met a friend who told me to hurry up, for Rabbie Burns was just ahead. I whippit up my horse, and came up to a roughly dressed man, ridin' slowly along, with his blue bonnet pulled down over his forehead, and his eyes turned toward the groond." "Didn't you speak to him?" I said. "Nay, nay," replied the man, in a tone of deep reverence, "he was Rabbie Burns. I dare na speak to him. If he had been any other mon I would have said 'good morrow to ye.'" Beautiful and eloquent tribute, paid by an unlettered peasant, not to rank or to wealth, but to a soul--a mighty soul though clad in "hodden grey" like himself!
The most interesting object was yet to be visited--the cottage of his birth, I entered it with reverence; and a well dressed, but very old, woman welcomed me in. "This is the room," she said. I looked around on the rough stone walls and could not believe that it ever contained such a soul; for the cottage, with all its subsequent repairs, was hardly equal to the generality of our early log cabins. The old lady was very affable. In her early life she had been connected with an inn at Mauchline, and had seen the poet often. "Rabbie was a funny fellow," she said; "I ken'd him weel; and he stoppit at our hoose on his way up to Edinburgh to see the lairds." I asked her if he was not always humorous. "Nae, nae," she replied, "he used to come in and sit doun wi' his hands in his lap like a bashful country lad; very glum, till he got a drap o' whuskey, or heard a gude story, _and then he was aff!_ He was very poorly in his latter days." Those closing days in Dumfries, steeped in poverty to the lips, forms one of the most tragic chapters in literary history; and I know scarcely anything in our language more pathetic than the letter which he wrote describing his wretched bondage to the dominion of strong drink. An old lady of Kilmarnock told my friend, the late Dr. Taylor of New York, that when a young woman she had gone to Burns' house to assist in preparations for his funeral, and stated that there was not enough decent linen in the house to lay out the most splendid genius in all Scotland! When I was at Ayr, a sister of Burns, Mrs. Begg, was still living, and I am always regretting that I did not call upon her. His widow, Jean Armour, had died but a few years before; and when a certain pert American who called upon the old lady had the audacity to ask her: "Can you show me any relics of the poet?" answered with majestic dignity: "Sir, I am the only relic of Robert Burns."
I went abroad on this first visit to Europe keen for lion hunting, and with an eager desire to see some of the men who had been my literary benefactors. On my arrival in London, having a letter of introduction to Charles Dickens, which a mutual friend had given to me, I resolved to present it. Charles Dickens was an idol of my college days, and I had spent a few minutes with him in Philadelphia during his recent visit to the United States. He had returned from his triumphal tour about a month before I landed in Liverpool. I called at his house, but he was not at home. The next day he did me the honor to call on me at Morley's Hotel, and, not finding me in, invited me up to his house near York Gate, Regents Park. It was a dingy, brick house surrounded by a high wall, but cheerful and cozy within. I found him in his sanctum, a singularly shaped room, with statuettes of Sam Weller and others of his creations on the mantelpiece. A portrait of his beautiful wife was upon the wall--that wife, the separation from whom threw a strange, sad shadow over his home. How handsome he was then! With his deep, dark, lustrous eyes, that you saw yourself in, and the merry mouth wreathed with laughter, and the luxuriant mass of dark hair that he wore in a sort of stack over his lofty forehead! He had a slight lisp in his pleasant voice, and ran on in rapid talk for an hour, with a shy reluctance to talk about his own