riesshire, and obtained an appointment from the
Board of Excise: then, poet, farmer, and exciseman, he went back to
Mauchline and was married to Jean. Leaving her and her child he repaired
to Ellisland, where he was obliged to build a cottage for himself. He
dug the foundations, collected stone and sand, carted lime, and
generally assisted the masons and carpenters. Nor was this all, for he
directed at the same time whatever labor the careful cultivation of a
farm demanded from its tenant. He was happy at Ellisland,--happier than
he had been at Mount Oliphant, where his family had been so sorely
pinched by poverty, and much happier than he had been at Mossgiel, where
he had wrought so much trouble for himself and others. A good son and a
good brother, he was a good husband and a good father. It was in no idle
moment that he wrote this stanza, which his conduct now illustrated:--

"To make a happy fireside chime
To weans and wife,
That's the true pathos and sublime
Of human life."

His life was orderly; his wants were few and easily supplied; his mind
was active, and his poetical vein more productive than it had been at
Edinburgh. The best lyric that he wrote at Ellisland was the one in
praise of his wife ('Of a' the airts the wind can blaw--'); the most
important poem 'Tam o' Shanter.' Farmer and exciseman, he was very
busy,--busier, perhaps, as the last than the first, for while his
farming labors might be performed by others, his excise labors could
only be performed by himself; the district under his charge covering ten
parishes, the inspection of which required his riding about two hundred
miles a week. The nature of his duties, and the spirit with which he
went through them, may be inferred from a bit of his doggerel:--

"Searching auld wives' barrels,
Och, hone, the day!
That clarty barm should stain my laurels:
But--what'll ye say--
These movin' things ca'd wives and weans
Wad move the very hearts o' stanes!"

A model exciseman, he was neither a model nor a prosperous farmer, for
here as elsewhere, mother earth was an unkind stepmother to him. He
struggled on, hoping against hope, from June 1788 to December 1791;
then, beaten, worn out, exhausted, he gave up his farm and removed to
Dumfries, exchanging his cozy cottage with its outlook of woods and
waters for a mean little house in the Wee Vennel, with its inlook of
narrow dirty st