'
ithers than to mend oorsels. Ye have the head, onyhow; but Jamie Brown
tells me it's a doctor ye're gaun to be, after a'."

"Nonsense, John Hogg--I wonder how a man o' your standing"----

"Nonsense, I grant you," said one of the students; "but true enough for
a' that, Bob. Ye see, John, Bob an' I were at the King's Muirs last
Saturday, an ca'ed at the _pendicle_, in the passing, for a cup o' whey;
when the guidwife tellt us there was ane o' the callants, who had broken
into the milk-house twa nichts afore, lyin' ill o' a surfeit. 'Dangerous
case,' said Bob; 'but let me see him; I have studied to small purpose if
I know nothing o' medicine, my good woman.' Weel, the woman was just
glad enough to bring him to the bedside; an' no wonder--ye never saw a
wiser phiz in your lives--Dr. Dumpie's was naething till't; an', after
he had sucked the head o' his stick for ten minutes, an' fand the loon's
pulse, an' asked mair questions than the guidwife liked to answer, he
prescribed. But, losh! sic a prescription! A day's fasting an' twa
ladles o' nettle kail was the gist o't; but then there went mair Latin
to the tail o' that, than oor neebor the Doctor ever had to lose."

But I dwell too long on the conversation of this evening. I feel,
however, a deep interest in recalling it to memory. The education of
Ferguson was of a twofold character--he studied in the schools and among
the people; but it was in the latter tract alone that he acquired the
materials of all his better poetry; and I feel as if, for at least one
brief evening, I was admitted to the privileges of a class-fellow, and
sat with him on the same form. The company broke up a little after ten;
and I did not again hear of John Hogg till I read his elegy, about four
years after, among the poems of my friend. It is by no means one of the
happiest pieces in the volume, nor, it strikes me, highly
characteristic; but I have often perused it with an interest very
independent of its merits.

CHAPTER III.

"But he is weak--both man and boy
Has been an idler in the land."--WORDSWORTH.

I was attempting to listen, on the evening of the following Sunday, to a
dull, listless discourse--one of the discourses so common at this
period, in which there was fine writing without genius, and fine
religion without Christianity--when a person who had just taken his
place beside me, tapped me on the shoulder, and thrust a letter into my
hand. It was my newly-acquired