in his more genial mood. Take the opening lines of
his Thanksgiving Day. What a plain, hearty picture of substantial
comfort!

"When corn is in the garret stored,
And sauce in cellar well secured;
When good fat beef we can afford,
And things that 're dainty,
With good sweet cider on our board,
And pudding plenty;

"When stock, well housed, may chew the cud,
And at my door a pile of wood,
A rousing fire to warm my blood,
Blest sight to see!
It puts my rustic muse in mood
To sing for thee."

If he needs a simile, he takes the nearest at hand. In a letter to his
daughter he says:--

"That mine is not a longer letter,
The cause is not the want of matter,--
Of that there's plenty, worse or better;
But like a mill
Whose stream beats back with surplus water,
The wheel stands still."

Something of the humor of Burns gleams out occasionally from the sober
decorum of his verses. In an epistle to his friend Betton, high sheriff
of the county, who had sent to him for a peck of seed corn, he says:--

"Soon plantin' time will come again,
Syne may the heavens gie us rain,
An' shining heat to bless ilk plain
An' fertile hill,
An' gar the loads o' yellow grain,
Our garrets fill.

"As long as I has food and clothing,
An' still am hale and fier and breathing,
Ye 's get the corn--and may be aething
Ye'll do for me;
(Though God forbid)--hang me for naething
An' lose your fee."

And on receiving a copy of some verses written by a lady, he talks in a
sad way for a Presbyterian deacon:--

"Were she some Aborigine squaw,
Wha sings so sweet by nature's law,
I'd meet her in a hazle shaw,
Or some green loany,
And make her tawny phiz and 'a
My welcome crony."

The practical philosophy of the stout, jovial rhymer was but little
affected by the sour-featured asceticism of the elder. He says:--

"We'll eat and drink, and cheerful take
Our portions for the Donor's