care not.
I never felt less anxiety about where I went and what I did. A feather
just lighted on the ground can scarce be less concerned where the next
blast may carry it. If I go, I shall see my children--if I stay, I
shall mend my fortune. Dined at home and went to the play in the
evening. Lady Torphichen had commanded the play, and there were all my
Swinton cousins young and old. The play was "A Bold Stroke for a
Wife,"[144]--Charles Kemble acting as Feignwell. The plot is extravagant
nonsense, but with lively acting the ludicrousness of the situation
bears it through, and few comedies act better. After this came _Rob
Roy_, where the Bailie played with his usual excellence. The piece was
not over until near one in the morning, yet I did not feel tired--which
is much.

_March_ 7.--To-day I wrought and corrected proof-sheets; went to the
Court, and had a worry at the usual trashy small wares which are
presented at the end of a Session. An official predecessor of mine, the
facetious Robert Sinclair, was wont to say the three last days of the
Session should be abolished by Act of Parliament.[145] Came home late,
and was a good deal broken in upon by visitors. Amongst others, John
Swinton, now of Swinton, brought me the skull of his ancestor, Sir Allan
Swinton, who flourished five hundred years ago. I will get a cast made
of the stout old carle. It is rare to see a genuine relic of the mortal
frame drawing so far back. Went to my Lord Gillies's to dinner, and
witnessed a singular exhibition of personification.

Miss Stirling Grame,[146] a lady of the Duntroon family, from which
Clavers was descended, looks like thirty years old, and has a face of
the Scottish cast, with a good expression in point of good sense and
good humour. Her conversation, so far as I have had the advantage of
hearing it, is shrewd and sensible, but no ways brilliant. She dined
with us, went off as to the play, and returned in the character of an
old Scottish lady. Her dress and behaviour were admirable, and the
conversation unique. I was in the secret, of course, did my best to keep
up the ball, but she cut me out of all feather. The prosing account she
gave of her son, the antiquary, who found an auld wig in a slate quarry,
was extremely ludicrous, and she puzzled the Professor of Agriculture
with a merciless account of the succession of crops in the parks around
her old mansion-house. No person to whom the secret was not intrusted
had the least