imitators
and disciples. This was Malcolm's book-case. There was in another corner
near the fire-place a little table and above it hung a couple of shelves
for books of another sort, the Bible and The Westminster Confession,
Bunyan and Baxter and Fox's Book of Martyrs, Rutherford and McCheyne and
Law, The Ten Years' Conflict, Spurgeon's Sermons and Smith's Isaiah, and
a well worn copy of the immortal Robbie. This was the mother's corner,
a cosy spot where she nourished her soul by converse with the great
masters of thought and of conscience.

In this "cosy wee hoosie" Malcolm McNish and his mother passed their
quiet evenings, for the days were given to toil, in talk, not to say
discussion of the problems, the rights and wrongs of the working man.
They agreed in much; they differed, and strongly, in point of view. The
mother was all for reform of wrongs with the existing economic system,
reverencing the great Adam Smith. The son was for a new deal, a new
system, the Socialistic, with modifications all his own. All, or almost
all, that Malcolm had read the mother had read with the exception of
Marx. She "cudna thole yon godless loon" or his theories or his works.
Malcolm had grown somewhat sick of Marx since the war. Indeed, the war
had seriously disturbed the foundations of Malcolm's economic faith, and
he was seeking a readjustment of his opinion and convictions, which were
rather at loose ends. In this state of mind he found little comfort from
his shrewd old mother.

"Y'e have nae anchor, laddie, and ilka woof of air and ilka turn o' the
tide and awa' ye go."

As for her anchor, she made no bones of announcing that she had
been brought up on the Shorter Catechism and the Confession and in
consequence found a place for every theory of hers, Social and Economic
as well as Ethical and Religious, within the four corners of the mighty
fabric of the Calvinistic system of Philosophy and Faith.

One of the keen joys of her life since coming to the new country she
found in her discussions with the Rev. Murdo Matheson, whom, after some
considerable hesitation, she had finally chosen to "sit under." The Rev.
Murdo's theology was a little narrow for her. She had been trained in
the schools of the Higher Critics of the Free Kirk leaders at home.
She talked familiarly of George Adam Smith, whom she affectionately
designated as "George Adam." She would wax wrathful over the memory of
the treatment meted out to Robertson Smith b