kinship with me, when I built on
such a different foundation. When I suggested that the 109th Psalm,
which she read as the allotted portion in "Fletcher's Family
Devotions," was not fit to be read in a Christian household, she said
meekly--"You are quite right, I shall mark it, and never read it again."

My mother always thought me like her sister Mary, and when I asked Mr.
Taylor if he saw any resemblance between us, he said, with cruel
candour--"Oh, no. Your Aunt Mary is a very handsome woman." But in ways
and manners, both my sister Mary and myself had considerable
resemblances to our mother's favourite sister; and I can see traces of
it in my own nieces. There can be no direct descent from maiden aunts,
though the working ants and bees do not inherit their industrious
habits from either male or female parents, but from their maiden aunts.
Galton's theory, that potentialities not utilized by individuals or by
their direct descendants may miss a generation or two, opens a wide
field of thought, and collaterals may draw from the original source
what was never suspected. And the Brodies intermarried in such a way as
to shock modern ideas. When my father was asked if a certain Mr.
Dudgeon, of Leith, was related to him, he said--"He is my mother's
cousin and my stepmother's cousin, and my father-in-law's cousin, and
my mother-in-law's cousin." Except for Spences and Wauchopes there was
not a relative of my father that was not related to my mother.
Grandfather Brodie married his cousin, and Grandfather Spence married
his late wife, Janet Parks cousin Katherine Swanston. I cannot see that
these close marriages produced degenerates, either physical or mental,
in the case of my own family.

Of the twelve months I spent in the old country, I spent six with the
dear old aunts. How proud Aunt Mary was of my third novel, with the
sketch of Aunt Margaret in it, of the Cornhill article, and the request
from Mr. Wilson to write for The Fortnightly. I introduced her to new
books and especially to new poets; she had never heard of Browning and
Jean Ingelow. She was so much cleverer than her neighbours that I often
wondered how she could put up with them. How conservative these farmers
and farmers' wives and daughters were, to be sure. These big tenants
considered themselves quite superior to tradesmen, even to merchants,
unless they were in a big way. There was infinitely more difference
between their standard of living and that of