h they have obligingly
done. Yesterday every tooth on the right side of my head was absolutely
waltzing. I would have drawn by the half dozen, but country dentists are
not to be lippened to.[238] To-day all is quiet, but a little swelling
and stiffness in the jaw. Went to Chiefswood at one, and marked with
regret forty trees indispensably necessary for paling--much like drawing
a tooth; they _are_ wanted and will never be better, but I am
avaricious of grown trees, having so few.

Worked a fair task; dined, and read Clapperton's journey and Denham's
into Bornou. Very entertaining, and less botheration about mineralogy,
botany, and so forth, than usual. Pity Africa picks up so many brave
men, however. Work in the evening.

_April_ 6.--Wrote in the morning. Went at one to Huntly Burn, where I
had the great pleasure to hear, through a letter from Sir Adam, that
Sophia was in health, and Johnnie gaining strength. It is a fine
exchange from deep and aching uncertainty on so interesting a subject,
to the little spitfire feeling of "Well, but they might have taken the
trouble to write"; but so wretched a correspondent as myself has not
much to say, so I will just grumble sufficiently to maintain the
patriarchal dignity.

I returned in time to work, and to receive a shoal of things from J.B.
Among others, a letter from an Irish lady, who, for the _beaux yeux_,
which I shall never look upon, desires I will forthwith send her all the
Waverley Novels, which are published, with an order to furnish her with
all others in course as they appear, which she assures me will be an
_era_ in her life. She may find out some other epocha.

_April_ 7.--Made out my morning's task; at one drove to Chiefswood, and
walked home by the Rhymer's Glen, Mar's Lee, and Haxell-Cleugh. Took me
three hours. The heath gets somewhat heavier for me every year--but
never mind, I like it altogether as well as the day I could tread it
best. My plantations are getting all into green leaf, especially the
larches, if theirs may be called leaves, which are only a sort of hair,
and from the number of birds drawn to these wastes, I may congratulate
myself on having literally made the desert to sing. As I returned, there
was, in the phraseology of that most precise of prigs in a white
collarless coat and _chapeau bas_, Mister Commissary Ramsay--"a rather
dense inspissation of rain." Deil care.

"Lord, who would live turmoiled in the Court,
That might enjo