guess of an impostor, except one shrewd young lady
present, who observed the hand narrowly and saw it was plumper than the
age of the lady seemed to warrant. This lady, and Miss Bell[147] of
Coldstream, have this gift of personification to a much higher degree
than any person I ever saw.

_March_ 8.--Wrote in the morning, then to Court, where we had a sederunt
till nigh two o'clock. From thence to the Coal Gas Committee, with whom
we held another, and, thank God, a final meeting. Gibson went with me.
They had Mr. Munro, Trotter, Tom Burns, and Inglis. The scene put me in
mind of Chichester Cheyne's story of a Shawnee Indian and himself,
dodging each other from behind trees, for six or seven hours, each in
the hope of a successful shot. There was bullying on both sides, but we
bullied to best purpose, for we must have surrendered at discretion,
notwithstanding the bold face we put on it. On the other hand, I am
convinced they have got a capital bargain.

_March_ 9.--I set about arranging my papers, a task which I always take
up with the greatest possible ill-will and which makes me cruelly
nervous. I don't know why it should be so, for I have nothing
particularly disagreeable to look at; far from it, I am better than I
was at this time last year, my hopes firmer, my health stronger, my
affairs bettered and bettering. Yet I feel an inexpressible nervousness
in consequence of this employment. The memory, though it retains all
that has passed, has closed sternly over it; and this rummaging, like a
bucket dropped suddenly into a well, deranges and confuses the ideas
which slumbered on the mind. I am nervous, and I am bilious, and, in a
word, I am unhappy. This is wrong, very wrong; and it is reasonably to
be apprehended that something of serious misfortune will be the deserved
punishment of this pusillanimous lowness of spirits. Strange that one
who, in most things, may be said to have enough of the 'care na by',
should be subject to such vile weakness! Well, having written myself
down an ass, I will daub it no farther, but e'en trifle till the humour
of work comes.

Before the humour came I had two or three long visits. Drummond Hay, the
antiquary and lyon-herald, came in.[148] I do not know anything which
relieves the mind so much from the sullens as trifling discussion about
_antiquarian old-womanries_. It is like knitting a stocking, diverting
the mind without occupying it; or it is like, by Our Lady, a mill-dam,
whi