I have to thank the public and my own special craft cordially and much
for their reception of these Idle Hours--Brown Studies, as a friendly
wag calls them--and above all, for their taking to their hearts that
great old dog and his dead friends,--for all which the one friend who
survives thanks them. There is no harm and some good in letting our
sympathy and affection go forth without stint on such objects, dead and
homely though they be.
When I think of that noble head, with its look and eye of boundless
affection and pluck, simplicity and single-heartedness, I feel what it
would be for us, who call ourselves the higher animals, to be in our
ways as simple, affectionate, and true, as that old mastiff; and in the
highest of all senses, I often think of what Robert Burns says
somewhere, "Man is the god of the dog." It would be well for man if his
worship were as immediate and instinctive--as absolute as the dog's. Did
we serve our God with half the zeal Rab served his, we might trust to
sleep as peacefully in our graves as he does in his. When James turned
his angry eye and raised his quick voice and foot, his worshipper slunk
away, humbled and afraid, angry with himself for making _him_ angry;
anxious by any means to crouch back into his favor, and a kind look or
word. Is that the way we take His displeasure, even when we can't think,
as Rab couldn't, we were immediately to blame? It is, as the old worthy
says, something to trust our God in the dark, as the dog does his.
A dear and wise and exquisite child, drew a plan for a headstone on the
grave of a favorite terrier, and she had in it the words "WHO died" on
such a day; the older and more worldly-minded painter put in "WHICH;"
and my friend and "Bossy's" said to me, with some displeasure, as we
were examining the monuments, "Wasn't he a Who as much as they?" and
wasn't she righter than they? and
"Quis desiderio sit aut pudor aut modus
Tam cari capitis"--
as that of "Rab."
With regard to the quotations--and the much Latin and some Greek, the
world of men, and especially of women, is dead against me. I am sorry
for it. As he said, who was reminded in an argument that the facts were
against him, "So much the worse for them," and I may add for me. Latin
and Greek are not dead--in one sense, they are happily immortal; but the
present age is doing its worst to kill them, and much of their own best
good and pleasure.
23, RUTLAND STREET,
_October 13, 1859_.
_RAB AND HIS FRIENDS._
_To MY TWO FRIENDS
at Busby, Renfrewshire,
In Remembrance of a Journey from Carstairs Junction
to Toledo and back,
The Story of "Rab and his Friends" is inscribed._
Four-and-thirty years ago, Bob Ainslie and I were coming up Infirmary
Street from the Edinburgh High School, our heads together, and our arms
intertwisted, as only lovers and boys know how, or why.
When we got to the top of the street, and turned north, we espied a
crowd at the Tron Church. "A dog-fight!" shouted Bob, and was off; and
so was I, both of us all but praying that it might not be over before we
got up! And is not this boy-nature? and human nature too? and don't we
all wish a house on fire not to be out before we see it? Dogs like
fighting; old Isaac says they "delight" in it, and for the best of all
reasons; and boys are not cruel because they like to see the fight. They
see three of the great cardinal virtues of dog or man--courage,
endurance, and skill--in intense action. This is very different from a
love of making dogs fight, and enjoying, and aggravating, and making
gain by their pluck. A boy--be he ever so fond himself of fighting, if
he be a good boy, hates and despises all this, but he would have run off
with Bob and me fast enough: it is a natural, and a not wicked interest,
that all boys and men have in witnessing intense energy in action.
Does any curious and finely-ignorant woman wish to know how Bob's eye at
a glance announced a dog-fight to his brain? He did not, he could not
see the dogs fighting; it was a flash of an inference, a rapid
induction. The crowd round a couple of dogs fighting, is a crowd
masculine mainly, with an occasional active, compassionate woman,
fluttering wildly round the outside, and using her tongue and her hands
freely upon the men, as so many "brutes;" it is a crowd annular,
compact, and mobile; a crowd centripetal, having its eyes and its heads
all bent downwards and inwards, to one common focus.
Well, Bob and I are up, and find it is not over: a small thoroughbred,
white bull-terrier, is busy throttling a large shepherd's dog,
unaccustomed to war, but not to be trifled with. They are hard at it;
the scientific little fellow doing his work in great style, his pastoral
enemy fighting wildly, but with the sharpest of teeth and a great
courage. Science and breeding, however, soon had their own; the Game
Chicken, as the premature Bob called him, working his way up, took his
final grip of poor Yarrow's throat,--and he lay gasping and done for.
His master, a brown, handsome, big young shepherd from Tweedsmuir, would
have liked to have knocked down any man, would "drink up Esil, or eat a
crocodile," for that part, if he had a chance: it was no use kicking the
little dog; that would only make him hold the closer. Many were the
means shouted out in mouthfuls, of the best possible ways of ending it.
"Water!" but there was none near, and many cried for it who might have
got it from the well at Blackfriars Wynd. "Bite the tail!" and a large,
vague, benevolent, middle-aged man, more desirous than wise, with some
struggle got the bushy end of _Yarrow's_ tail into his ample mouth, and
bit it with all his might. This was more than enough for the
much-enduring, much-perspiring shepherd, who, with a gleam of joy over
his broad visage, delivered a terrific facer upon our large, vague,
benevolent, middle-aged friend,--who went down like a shot.
Still the Chicken holds; death not far _off_. "Snuff! a pinch of snuff!"
observed a calm, highly-dressed young buck, with an eye-glass in his
eye. "Snuff, indeed!" growled the angry crowd, affronted and glaring.
"Snuff! a pinch of snuff!" again observes the buck but with more
urgency; whereon were produced several open boxes, and from a mull which
may have been at Culloden, he took a pinch, knelt down, and presented it
to the nose of the Chicken. The laws of physiology and of snuff take
their course; the Chicken sneezes, and Yarrow is free!
The young pastoral giant stalks off with Yarrow in his arms,--comforting
him.
But the Bull Terrier's blood is up, and his soul unsatisfied; he grips
the first dog he meets, and discovering she is not a dog, in Homeric
phrase, he makes a brief sort of _amende_, and is off. The boys, with
Bob and me at their head, are after him: down Niddry Street he goes,
bent on mischief; up the Cowgate like an arrow--Bob and I, and our small
men, panting behind.
There, under the single arch of the South Bridge, is a huge mastiff,
sauntering down the middle of the causeway, as if with his hands in his
pockets: he is old, gray, brindled, as big as a little Highland bull,
and has the Shaksperian dewlaps shaking as he goes.
The Chicken makes straight at him, and fastens on his throat. To our
astonishment, the great creature does nothing but stand still, hold
himself up, and roar--yes, roar; a long, serious, remonstrative roar.
How is this? Bob and I are up to them. _He is muzzled!_ The bailies had
proclaimed a general muzzling, and his master, studying strength and
economy mainly, had encompassed his huge jaws in a home-made apparatus,
constructed out of the leather of some ancient _breechin_. His mouth was
open as far as it could; his lips curled up in rage--a sort of terrible
grin; his teeth gleaming, ready, from out the darkness; the strap across
his mouth tense as a bowstring; his whole frame stiff with indignation
and surprise; his roar asking us all round; "Did you ever see the like
of this?" He looked a statue of anger and astonishment, done in Aberdeen
granite.
We soon had a crowd: the Chicken held on. "A knife!" cried Bob; and a
cobbler gave him his knife: you know the kind of knife, worn away
obliquely to a point, and always keen. I put its edge to the tense
leather; it ran before it; and then!--one sudden jerk of that enormous
head, a sort of dirty mist about his mouth, no noise,--and the bright
and fierce little fellow is dropped, limp, and dead. A solemn pause:
this was more than any of us had bargained for. I turned the little
fellow over, and saw he was quite dead; the mastiff had taken him by the
small of the back like a rat, and broken it.
He looked down at his victim appeased, ashamed, and amazed; snuffed him
all over, stared at him, and taking a sudden thought, turned round and
trotted off. Bob took the dead dog up, and said, "John, we'll bury him
after tea." "Yes," said I, and was off after the mastiff. He made up the
Cowgate at a rapid swing; he had forgotten some engagement. He turned up
the Candlemaker Row, and stopped at the Harrow Inn.
There was a carrier's cart ready to start, and a keen, thin, impatient,
black-a-vised little man, his hand at his gray horse's head, looking
about angrily for something. "Rab, ye thief!" said he, aiming a kick at
my great friend, who drew cringing up, and avoiding the heavy shoe with
more agility than dignity, and watching his master's eye, slunk dismayed
under the cart,--his ears down, and as much as he had of tail down too.
What a man this must be--thought I--to whom my tremendous hero turns
tail! The carrier saw the muzzle hanging, cut and useless, from his
neck, and I eagerly told him the story, which Bob and I always thought,
and still think, Homer, or King David, or Sir Walter alone were worthy
to rehearse. The severe little man was mitigated, and condescended to
say, "Rab, my man, puir Rabbie,"--whereupon the stump of a tail rose up,
the ears were cocked, the eyes filled, and were comforted; the two
friends were reconciled. "Hupp!" and a stroke of the whip were given to
Jess; and off went the three.
* * * * *
Bob and I buried the Game Chicken that night (we had not much of a tea)
in the back-green of his house in Melville Street, No. 17, with
considerable gravity and silence; and being at the time in the Iliad,
and, like all boys, Trojans, we called him Hector of course.
* * * * *
Six years have passed,--a long time for a boy and a dog: Bob Ainslie is
off to the wars; I am a medical student, and clerk at Minto House
Hospital.
Rab I saw almost every week, on the Wednesday; and we had much pleasant
intimacy. I found the way to his heart by frequent scratching of his
huge head, and an occasional bone. When I did not notice him he would
plant himself straight before me, and stand wagging that bud of a tail,
and looking up, with his head a little to the one side. His master I
occasionally saw; he used to call me "Maister John," but was laconic as
any Spartan.
One fine October afternoon, I was leaving the hospital, when I saw the
large gate open, and in walked Rab, with that great and easy saunter of
his. He looked as if taking general possession of the place; like the
Duke of Wellington entering a subdued city, satiated with victory and
peace. After him came Jess, now white from age, with her cart; and in it
a woman, carefully wrapped up,--the carrier leading the horse anxiously,
and looking back. When he saw me, James (for his name was James Noble)
made a curt and grotesque "boo," and said, "Maister John, this is the
mistress; she's got a trouble in her breest--some kind o' an income
we're thinking'."
By this time I saw the woman's face; she was sitting on a sack filled
with straw, her husband's plaid round her, and his big-coat with its
large white metal buttons, over her feet.
I never saw a more unforgettable face--pale, serious, _lonely_,[2]
delicate, sweet, without being at all what we call fine. She looked
sixty, and had on a mutch, white as snow, with its black ribbon; her
silvery, smooth hair setting off her dark-gray eyes--eyes such as one
sees only twice or thrice in a lifetime, full of suffering, full also of
the overcoming of it: her eyebrows black and delicate, and her mouth
firm, patient, and contented, which few mouths ever are.
[2] It is not easy giving this look by one word; it was
expressive of her being so much of her life alone.
As I have said, I never saw a more beautiful countenance, or one more
subdued to settled quiet. "Ailie," said James, "this is Maister John,
the young doctor; Rab's freend, ye ken. We often speak aboot you,
doctor." She smiled, and made a movement, but said nothing; and prepared
to come down, putting her plaid aside and rising. Had Solomon, in all
his glory, been handing down the Queen of Sheba at his palace gate, he
could not have done it more daintily, more tenderly, more like a
gentleman, than did James the Howgate carrier, when he lifted down Ailie
his wife. The contrast of his small, swarthy, weather-beaten, keen,
worldly face to hers--pale, subdued, and beautiful--was something
wonderful. Rab looked on concerned and puzzled, but ready for anything
that might turn up,--were it to strangle the nurse, the porter, or even
me. Ailie and he seemed great friends.
"As I was sayin' she's got a kind o' trouble in her breest, doctor; wull
ye tak' a look at it?" We walked into the consulting-room, all four; Rab
grim and comic, willing to be happy and confidential if cause could be
shown, willing also to be the reverse, on the same terms. Ailie sat
down, undid her open gown and her lawn handkerchief round her neck, and
without a word, showed me her right breast. I looked at and examined it
carefully,-she and James watching me, and Rab eying all three. What
could I say? there it was, that had once been so soft, so shapely, so
white, so gracious and bountiful, so "full of all blessed
conditions,"--hard as a stone, a centre of horrid pain, making that pale
face, with its gray, lucid, reasonable eyes, and its sweet resolved
mouth, express the full measure of suffering overcome. Why was that
gentle, modest, sweet woman, clean and lovable, condemned by God to bear
such a burden?
I got her away to bed. "May Rab and me bide?" said James. "_You_ may;
and Rab, if he will behave himself." "I'se warrant he's do that,
doctor;" and in slank the faithful beast. I wish you could have seen
him. There are no such dogs now. He belonged to a lost tribe. As I have
said, he was brindled and gray like Rubislaw granite; his hair short,
hard, and close, like a lion's; his body thick set, like a little
bull--a sort of compressed Hercules of a dog. He must have been ninety
pounds' weight, at the least; he had a large blunt head; his muzzle
black as night, his mouth blacker than any night, a tooth or two--being
all he had--gleaming out of his jaws of darkness. His head was scarred
with the records of old wounds, a sort of series of fields of battle all
over it; one eye out, one ear cropped as close as was Archbishop
Leighton's father's; the remaining eye had the power of two; and above
it, and in constant communication with it, was a tattered rag of an ear,
which was forever unfurling itself, like an old flag; and then that bud
of a tail, about one inch long, if it could in any sense be said to be
long, being as broad as long--the mobility, the instantaneousness of
that bud were very funny and surprising, and its expressive twinklings
and winkings, the intercommunications between the eye, the ear, and it,
were of the oddest and swiftest.
Rab had the dignity and simplicity of great size; and having fought his
way all along the road to absolute supremacy, he was as mighty in his
own line as Julius Caesar or the Duke of Wellington, and had the
gravity[3] of all great fighters.
[3] A Highland game-keeper, when asked why a certain terrier, of
singular pluck, was so much more solemn than the other dogs,
said, "Oh, Sir, life's full o' sairiousness to him--he just
never can get enuff o' fechtin'."
You must have often observed the likeness of certain men to certain
animals, and of certain dogs to men. Now, I never looked at Rab without
thinking of the great Baptist preacher, Andrew Fuller.[4] The same
large, heavy, menacing, combative, sombre, honest countenance, the same
deep inevitable eye, the same look,--as of thunder asleep, but
ready,--neither a dog nor a man to be trifled with.
[4] Fuller was, in early life, when a farmer lad at Soham, famous
as a boxer; not quarrelsome, but not without "the stern
delight" a man of strength and courage feels in their
exercise. Dr. Charles Stewart, of Dunearn, whose rare gifts
and graces as a physician, a divine, a scholar, and a
gentleman, live only in the memory of those few who knew and
survive him, liked to tell how Mr. Fuller used to say, that
when he was in the pulpit, and saw a _buirdly_ man come
along the passage, he would instinctively draw himself up,
measure his imaginary antagonist, and forecast how he would
deal with him, his hands meanwhile condensing into fists,
and tending to "square." He must have been a hard hitter if
he boxed as he preached--what "The Fancy" would call "an
ugly customer."
Next day, my master, the surgeon, examined Ailie. There was no doubt it
must kill her, and soon. It could be removed--it might never return--it
would give her speedy relief--she should have it done. She curtsied,
looked at James, and said, "When?" "To-morrow," said the kind surgeon--a
man of few words. She and James and Rab and I retired. I noticed that he
and she spoke little, but seemed to anticipate everything in each other.
The following day, at noon, the students came in, hurrying up the great
stair. At the first landing-place, on a small well-known blackboard, was
a bit of paper fastened by wafers, and many remains of old wafers beside
it. On the paper were the words,--"An operation to-day. J. B. _Clerk_."
Up ran the youths, eager to secure good places: in they crowded, full of
interest and talk. "What's the case?" "Which side is it?"
Don't think them heartless; they are neither better nor worse than you
or I; they get over their professional horrors, and into their proper
work--and in them pity--as an _emotion_, ending in itself or at best in
tears and a long-drawn breath, lessens, while pity as a _motive_, is
quickened, and gains power and purpose. It is well for poor human nature
that it is so.
The operating theatre is crowded; much talk and fun, and all the
cordiality and stir of youth. The surgeon with his staff of assistants
is there. In comes Ailie: one look at her quiets and abates the eager
students. That beautiful old woman is too much for them; they sit down,
and are dumb, and gaze at her. These rough boys feel the power of her
presence. She walks in quickly, but without haste; dressed in her mutch,
her neckerchief, her white dimity short-gown, her black bombazine
petticoat, showing her white worsted stockings and her carpet-shoes.
Behind her was James with Rab. James sat down in the distance, and took
that huge and noble head between his knees. Rab looked perplexed and
dangerous; forever cocking his ear and dropping it as fast.
Ailie stepped up on a seat, and laid herself on the table, as her friend
the surgeon told her; arranged herself, gave a rapid look at James, shut
her eyes, rested herself on me, and took my hand. The operation was at
once begun; it was necessarily slow; and chloroform--one of God's best
gifts to his suffering children--was then unknown. The surgeon did his
work. The pale face showed its pain, but was still and silent. Rab's
soul was working within him; he saw that something strange was going
on,--blood flowing from his mistress, and she suffering; his ragged ear
was up, and importunate; he growled and gave now and then a sharp
impatient yelp; he would have liked to have done something to that man.
But James had him firm, and gave him a _glower_ from time to time, and
an intimation of a possible kick;--all the better for James, it kept his
eye and his mind off Ailie.
It is over: she is dressed, steps gently and decently down from the
table, looks for James; then, turning to the surgeon and the students,
she curtsies,--and in a low, clear voice, begs their pardon if she has
behaved ill. The students--all of us--wept like children; the surgeon
happed her up carefully,--and, resting on James and me, Ailie went to
her room, Rab following. We put her to bed. James took off his heavy
shoes, crammed with tackets, heel-capt and toe-capt, and put them
carefully under the table, saying, "Maister John, I'm for nane o' yer
strynge nurse bodies for Ailie. I'll be her nurse, and I'll gang aboot
on my stockin' soles as canny as pussy." And so he did; and handy and
clever, and swift and tender as any woman, was that horny-handed, snell,
peremptory little man. Everything she got he gave her: he seldom slept;
and often I saw his small shrewd eyes out of the darkness, fixed on her.
As before, they spoke little.
Rab behaved well, never moving, showing us how meek and gentle he could
be, and occasionally, in his sleep, letting us know that he was
demolishing some adversary. He took a walk with me every day, generally
to the Candlemaker Row; but he was sombre and mild; declined doing
battle, though some fit cases offered, and indeed submitted to sundry
indignities; and was always very ready to turn, and came faster back,
and trotted up the stair with much lightness, and went straight to that
door.
Jess, the mare, had been sent, with her weatherworn cart, to Howgate,
and had doubtless her own dim and placid meditations and confusions, on
the absence of her master and Rab, and her unnatural freedom from the
road and her cart.
For some days Ailie did well. The wound healed "by the first intention;"
for as James said, "Oor Ailie's skin's ower clean to beil." The students
came in quiet and anxious, and surrounded her bed. She said she liked to
see their young, honest faces. The surgeon dressed her, and spoke to her
in his own short kind way, pitying her through his eyes, Rab and James
outside the circle,--Rab being now reconciled, and even cordial, and
having made up his mind that as yet nobody required worrying, but, as
you may suppose, _semper paratus_.
So far well: but, four days after the operation, my patient had a sudden
and long shivering, a "groosin'," as she called it. I saw her soon
after; her eyes were too bright, her cheek colored; she was restless,
and ashamed of being so; the balance was lost; mischief had begun. On
looking at the wound, a blush of red told the secret: her pulse was
rapid, her breathing anxious and quick, she wasn't herself, as she said,
and was vexed at her restlessness. We tried what we could. James did
everything, was everywhere; never in the way, never out of it; Rab
subsided under the table into a dark place, and was motionless, all but
his eye, which followed every one. Ailie got worse; began to wander in
her mind, gently; was more demonstrative in her ways to James, rapid in
her questions, and sharp at times. He was vexed, and said, "She was
never that way afore; no, never." For a time she knew her head was
wrong, and was always asking our pardon--the dear, gentle old woman:
then delirium set in strong, without pause. Her brain gave way, and then
came that terrible spectacle,--
"The intellectual power, through words and things,
Went sounding on its dim and perilous way;"
she sang bits of old songs and Psalms, stopping suddenly, mingling the
Psalms of David and the diviner words of his Son and Lord, with homely
odds and ends and scraps of ballads.
Nothing more touching, or in a sense more strangely beautiful, did I
ever witness. Her tremulous, rapid, affectionate, eager, Scotch
voice,--the swift, aimless, bewildered mind, the baffled utterance, the
bright and perilous eye; some wild words, some household cares,
something for James, the names of the dead, Rab called rapidly and in a
"fremyt" voice, and he starting up surprised, and slinking off as if he
were to blame somehow, or had been dreaming he heard; many eager
questions and beseechings which James and I could make nothing of, and
on which she seemed to set her all, and then sink back ununderstood. It
was very sad, but better than many things that are not called sad. James
hovered about, put out and miserable, but active and exact as ever; read
to her when there was a lull, short bits from the Psalms, prose and
metre, chanting the latter in his own rude and serious way, showing
great knowledge of the fit words, bearing up like a man, and dealing
over her as his "ain Ailie." "Ailie, ma woman!" "Ma ain bonnie wee
dawtie!"
The end was drawing on: the golden bowl was breaking; the silver cord
was fast being loosed--that _animula blandula_, _vagula_, _hospes_,
_comesque_, was about to flee. The body and the soul--companions for
sixty years--were being sundered, and taking leave. She was walking
alone, through the valley of that shadow, into which one day we must all
enter,--and yet she was not alone, for we know whose rod and staff were
comforting her.
One night she had fallen quiet, and as we hoped, asleep; her eyes were
shut. We put down the gas, and sat watching her. Suddenly she sat up in
bed, and taking a bed-gown which was lying on it rolled up, she held it
eagerly to her breast,--to the right side. We could see her eyes bright
with a surprising tenderness and joy, bending over this bundle of
clothes. She held it as a woman holds her sucking child; opening out her
night-gown impatiently, and holding it close, and brooding over it, and
murmuring foolish little words, as over one whom his mother comforteth,
and who sucks and is satisfied. It was pitiful and strange to see her
wasted dying look, keen and yet vague--her immense love.
"Preserve me!" groaned James, giving way. And then she rocked back and
forward, as if to make it sleep, hushing it, and wasting on it her
infinite fondness. "Wae's me, doctor; I declare she's thinkin' it's that
bairn." "What bairn?" "The only bairn we ever had; our wee Mysie, and
she's in the Kingdom, forty years and mair." It was plainly true: the
pain in the breast, telling its urgent story to a bewildered, ruined
brain, was misread and mistaken; it suggested to her the uneasiness of a
breast full of milk, and then the child; and so again once more they
were together, and she had her ain wee Mysie in her bosom.
This was the close. She sank rapidly: the delirium left her; but, as she
whispered, she was "clean silly;" it was the lightening before the final
darkness. After having for some time lain still--her eyes shut, she said
"James!" He came close to her, and lifting up her calm, clear, beautiful
eyes, she gave him a long look, turned to me kindly but shortly, looked
for Rab but could not see him, then turned to her husband again, as if
she would never leave off looking, shut her eyes, and composed herself.
She lay for some time breathing quick, and passed away so gently, that
when we thought she was gone, James, in his old-fashioned way, held the
mirror to her face. After a long pause, one small spot of dimness was
breathed out; it vanished away, and never returned, leaving the blank
clear darkness of the mirror without a stain. "What is our life? it is
even a vapor, which appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth
away."
Rab all this time had been full awake and motionless; he came forward
beside us: Ailie's hand, which James had held, was hanging down; it was
soaked with his tears; Rab licked it all over carefully, looked at her,
and returned to his place under the table.
James and I sat, I don't know how long, but for some time,--saying
nothing: he started up abruptly, and with some noise went to the table,
and putting his right fore and middle fingers each into a shoe, pulled
them out, and put them on, breaking one of the leather latchets, and
muttering in anger, "I never did the like o' that afore!"
I believe he never did; nor after either. "Rab!" he said roughly, and
pointing with his thumb to the bottom of the bed. Rab leapt up, and
settled himself; his head and eye to the dead face. "Maister John, ye'll
wait for me," said the carrier; and disappeared in the darkness,
thundering down-stairs in his heavy shoes. I ran to a front window;
there he was, already round the house, and out at the gate, fleeing like
a shadow.
I was afraid about him, and yet not afraid; so I sat down beside Rab,
and being wearied, fell asleep. I awoke from a sudden noise outside. It
was November, and there had been a heavy fall of snow. Rab was _in statu
quo_; he heard the noise too, and plainly knew it, but never moved. I
looked out; and there, at the gate, in the dim morning--for the sun was
not up--was Jess and the cart,--a cloud of steam rising from the old
mare. I did not see James; he was already at the door, and came up the
stairs, and met me. It was less than three hours since he left, and he
must have posted out--who knows how?--to Howgate, full nine miles off;
yoked Jess, and driven her astonished into town. He had an armful of
blankets, and was streaming with perspiration. He nodded to me, spread
out on the floor two pairs of clean old blankets having at their
corners, "A. G., 1794," in large letters in red worsted. These were the
initials of Alison Graeme, and James may have looked in at her from
without--himself unseen but not unthought of--when he was "wat, wat, and
weary," and after having walked many a mile over the hills, may have
seen her sitting, while "a' the lave were sleepin';" and by the
firelight working her name on the blankets, for her ain James's bed.
He motioned Rab down, and taking his wife in his arms, laid her in the
blankets, and happed her carefully and firmly up, leaving the face
uncovered; and then lifting her, he nodded again sharply to me, and with
a resolved but utterly miserable face, strode along the passage, and
down-stairs, followed by Rab. I followed with a light; but he didn't
need it. I went out, holding stupidly the candle in my hand in the calm
frosty air; we were soon at the gate. I could have helped him, but I saw
he was not to be meddled with, and he was strong, and did not need it.
He laid her down as tenderly, as safely, as he had lifted her out ten
days before--as tenderly as when he had her first in his arms when she
was only "A. G.,"--sorted her, leaving that beautiful sealed face open
to the heavens; and then taking Jess by the head, he moved away. He did
not notice me, neither did Rab, who presided behind the cart.
I stood till they passed through the long shadow of the College, and
turned up Nicolson Street. I heard the solitary cart sound through the
streets, and die away and come again; and I returned, thinking of that
company going up Libberton Brae, then along Roslin Muir, the morning
light touching the Pentlands and making them like on-looking ghosts;
then down the hill through Auchindinny woods, past "haunted
Woodhouselee;" and as daybreak came sweeping up the bleak Lammermuirs,
and fell on his own door, the company would stop, and James would take
the key, and lift Ailie up again, laying her on her own bed, and, having
put Jess up, would return with Rab and shut the door.
James buried his wife, with his neighbors mourning, Rab inspecting the
solemnity from a distance. It was snow, and that black ragged hole would
look strange in the midst of the swelling spotless cushion of white.
James looked after everything; then rather suddenly fell ill, and took
to bed; was insensible when the doctor came, and soon died. A sort of
low fever was prevailing in the village, and his want of sleep, his
exhaustion, and his misery, made him apt to take it. The grave was not
difficult to reopen. A fresh fall of snow had again made all things
white and smooth; Rab once more looked on, and slunk home to the stable.
* * * * *
And what of Rab? I asked for him next week at the new carrier who got
the goodwill of James's business, and was now master of Jess and her
cart. "How's Rab?" He put me off, and said rather rudely, "What's _your_
business wi' the dowg?" I was not to be so put off. "Where's Rab?" He,
getting confused and red, and intermeddling with his hair, said, "'Deed,
sir, Rab's deid." "Dead! what did he die of?" "Weel, sir," said he,
getting redder, "he didna exactly dee; he was killed. I had to brain him
wi' a rack-pin; there was nae doin' wi' him. He lay in the treviss wi'
the mear, and wadna come oot. I tempit him wi' kail and meat, but he wad
tak naething, and keepit me frae feedin' the beast, and he was aye gur
gurrin', and grup gruppin' me by the legs. I was laith to make awa wi'
the auld dowg, his like wasna atween this and Thornhill,--but, 'deed,
sir, I could do naething else." I believed him. Fit end for Rab, quick
and complete. His teeth and his friends gone, why should he keep the
peace, and be civil?
"_With BRAINS, Sir._"
"_Multi multa sciunt, pauci multum._"
"_It is one thing to_ wish to have truth on our side, _and
another thing to wish to be_ on the side of truth."--WHATELY.
"{Atalaiporos tois pollois he zetesis tes alepheias, kai
epi ta hetoima mallon trepontai.}"--THUCYDIDES.
"_The most perfect philosophy of the_ natural _kind, only staves
off our_ IGNORANCE _a little longer; as, perhaps, the most
perfect philosophy of the_ moral or metaphysical _kind, serves
only to discover larger portions of it._"--DAVID HUME.
"Pray, Mr. Opie, may I ask what you mix your colors with?" said a brisk
dilettante student to the great painter. "With _Brains_, sir," was the
gruff reply--and the right one. It did not give much of what we call
information; it did not expound the principles and rules of the art;
but, if the inquirer had the commodity referred to, it would awaken him;
it would set him a-going, a-thinking, and a-painting to good purpose. If
he had not the wherewithal, as was likely enough, the less he had to do
with colors and their mixture the better. Many other artists, when asked
such a question, would have either set about detailing the mechanical
composition of such and such colors, in such and such proportions,
rubbed up so and so; or perhaps they would (and so much the better, but
not the best) have shown him how they laid them on; but even this would
leave him at the critical point. Opie preferred going to the quick and
the heart of the matter: "With _Brains_, sir."
Sir Joshua Reynolds was taken by a friend to see a picture. He was
anxious to admire it, and he looked it over with a keen and careful but
favorable eye. "Capital composition; correct drawing; the color, tone,
chiaroscuro excellent; but--but--it wants, hang it, it wants--_That!_"
snapping his fingers; and, wanting "that," though it had everything
else, it was worth nothing.
Again, Etty was appointed teacher of the students of the Royal Academy,
having been preceded by a clever, talkative, scientific expounder of
aesthetics, who delighted to tell the young men _how_ everything was
done, how to copy this, and how to express that. A student came up to
the new master, "How should I do this, sir?" "Suppose you try." Another,
"What does this mean, Mr. Etty?" "Suppose you look." "But I have
looked." "Suppose you look again." And they did try, and they did look,
and looked again; and they saw and achieved what they never could have
done, had the how or the what (supposing this possible, which it is not
in its full and highest meaning) been told them, or done for them; in
the one case, sight and action were immediate, exact, intense, and
secure; in the other mediate, feeble, and lost as soon as gained. But
what are "_Brains_"? what did Opie mean? and what is Sir Joshua's
"_That_"? What is included in it? and what is the use, or the need of
trying and trying, of missing often before you hit, when you can be told
at once and be done with it; or of looking when you may be shown?
Everything in medicine and in painting--practical arts--as means to
ends, let their scientific enlargement be ever so rapid and immense,
depends upon the right answers to these questions.
First of all, "brains," in the painter, are not diligence, knowledge,
skill, sensibility, a strong will, or a high aim,--he may have all
these, and never paint anything so truly good and effective as the
rugged woodcut we must all remember, of Apollyon bestriding the whole
breadth of the way, and Christian girding at him like a man, in the old
sixpenny _Pilgrim's Progress_; and a young medical student may have
zeal, knowledge, ingenuity, attention, a good eye and a steady hand--he
may be an accomplished anatomist, stethoscopist, histologist, and
analyst; and yet, with all this, and all the lectures, and all the
books, and all the sayings, and all the preparations, drawings, tables,
and other helps of his teachers, crowded into his memory or his
note-books, he may be beaten in treating a whitlow or a colic, by the
nurse in the wards where he was clerk, or by the old country doctor who
brought him into the world, and who listens with such humble wonder to
his young friend's account, on his coming home after each session, of
all he had seen and done,--of all the last astonishing discoveries and
operations of the day. What the painter wants, in addition to, and as
the complement of, the other elements, is _genius and sense_; what the
doctor needs to crown and give worth and safety to his accomplishments,
is _sense and genius_: in the first case, more of this, than of that; in
the second, more of that, than of this. These are the "_Brains_" and the
"_That_."
And what is genius? and what is sense? Genius is a peculiar native
aptitude, or tendency, to any one calling or pursuit over all others. A
man may have a genius for governing, for killing, or for curing the
greatest number of men, and in the best possible manner: a man may have
a genius for the fiddle, or his mission may be for the tight-rope, or
the Jew's harp; or it may be a natural turn for seeking, and finding,
and teaching truth, and for doing the greatest possible good to mankind;
or it may be a turn equally natural for seeking, and finding, and
teaching a lie, and doing the _maximum_ of mischief. It was as natural,
as inevitable, for Wilkie to develop himself into a painter, and such a
painter as we know him to have been, as it is for an acorn when planted
to grow up into an oak, a specific _quercus robur_. But _genius_, and
nothing else, is not enough, even for a painter; he must likewise have
_sense_; and what is sense? _Sense_ drives, or ought to drive, the
coach; sense regulates, combines, restrains, commands, all the
rest--even the genius; and sense implies exactness and soundness, power
and promptitude of mind.
Then for the young doctor, he must have as his main, his master faculty,
SENSE--Brains--{nous}, justness of mind, because his subject-matter is
one in which principle works, rather than impulse, as in painting; the
understanding has first to do with it, however much it is worthy of the
full exercise of the feelings, and the affections. But all will not do,
if GENIUS is not there,--a real turn for the profession. It may not be a
liking for it--some of the best of its practitioners never really liked
it, at least liked other things better; but there must be a fitness of
faculty of body and mind for its full, constant, exact pursuit. This
sense and this genius, such a special therapeutic gift, had Hippocrates,
Sydenham, Pott, Pinel, John Hunter, Delpech, Dupuytren, Kellie, Cheyne,
Baillie, and Abercrombie. We might, to pursue the subject, pick out
painters who had much genius and little or no sense, and _vice versa_;
and physicians and surgeons, who had sense without genius, and genius
without sense, and some perhaps who had neither, and yet were
noticeable, and, in their own sideways, useful men.
But our great object will be gained if we have given our young readers
(and these remarks are addressed exclusively to students) any idea of
what we mean, if we have made them think, and look inwards. The noble
and sacred science you have entered on is large, difficult, and deep,
beyond most others; it is every day becoming larger, deeper, and in many
senses more difficult, more complicated and involved. It requires _more
than the average_ intellect, energy, attention, patience, and courage,
and that singular but imperial quality, at once a gift and an
acquirement, _presence of mind_--{anchinoia}, or nearness of the {nous},
as the subtle Greeks called it--than almost any other department of
human thought and action, except perhaps that of ruling men. Therefore
it is, that we hold it to be of paramount importance that the parents,
teachers, and friends of youths intended for medicine, and above all,
that those who examine them on their entering on their studies, should
at least (we might safely go much farther) satisfy themselves as far as
they can, that they are not below _par_ in intelligence; they may be
deficient and unapt, _qua medici_, and yet, if taken in time, may make
excellent men in other useful and honorable callings.
But suppose we have got the requisite amount and specific kind of
capacity, how are we to fill it with its means; how are we to make it
effectual for its end? On this point we say nothing, except that the
fear now-a-days, is rather that the mind gets too much of too many
things, than too little or too few. But this means of turning knowledge
to action, making it what Bacon meant when he said it was power,
invigorating the thinking substance--giving tone, and you may call it
muscle and nerve, blood and bone, to the mind--a firm gripe, and a keen
and sure eye; _that_ we think, is far too little considered or cared for
at present, as if the mere act of filling in everything forever into a
poor lad's brain, would give him the ability to make anything of it, and
above all, the power to appropriate the small portions of true
nutriment, and reject the dregs.
One comfort we have, that in the main, and in the last resort, there is
really very little that _can_ be done for any man by another. Begin with
the sense and the genius--the keen appetite and the good digestion--and,
amid all obstacles and hardships, the work goes on merrily and well;
without these, we all know what a laborious affair, and a dismal, it is
to make an incapable youth apply. Did any of you ever set yourselves to
keep up artificial respiration, or to trudge about for a whole night
with a narcotized victim of opium, or transfuse blood (your own perhaps)
into a poor, fainting exanimate wretch? If so, you will have some idea
of the heartless attempt, and its generally vain and miserable result,
to make a dull student apprehend--a debauched, interested, knowing, or
active in anything beyond the base of his brain--a weak, etiolated
intellect hearty, and worth anything; and yet how many such are dragged
through their dreary _curricula_, and by some miraculous process of
cramming, and equally miraculous power of turning their insides out, get
through their examinations: and then--what then? providentially, in most
cases, they find their level; the broad daylight of the world--its
shrewd and keen eye, its strong instinct of what can, and what cannot
serve _its_ purpose--puts all, except the poor object himself, to
rights; happy is it for him if he turns to some new and more congenial
pursuit in time.
But it may be asked, how are the brains to be strengthened, the sense
quickened, the genius awakened, the affections raised--the whole man
turned to the best account for the cure of his fellow-men? How are you,
when physics and physiology are increasing so marvellously, and when the
burden of knowledge, the quantity of transferable information, of
registered facts, of current names--and such names!--is so infinite: how
are you to enable a student to take all in, bear up under all, and use
it as not abusing it, or being abused by it? You must invigorate the
containing and sustaining mind, you must strengthen him from within, as
well as fill him from without; you must discipline, nourish, edify,
relieve, and refresh his entire nature; and how? We have no time to go
at large into this, but we will indicate what we mean:--encourage
languages, especially French and German, at the early part of their
studies; encourage not merely the book knowledge, but the personal
pursuit of natural history, of field botany, of geology, of zoology;
give the young, fresh, unforgetting eye, exercise and free scope upon
the infinite diversity and combination of natural colors, forms,
substances, surfaces, weights, and sizes--everything, in a word, that
will educate their eye or ear, their touch, taste, and smell, their
sense of muscular resistance; encourage them by prizes, to make
skeletons, preparations, and collections of any natural objects; and,
above all, try and get hold of their affections, and make them put their
hearts into their work. Let them, if possible, have the advantage of a
regulated _tutorial_, as well as the ordinary professorial system. Let
there be no excess in the number of classes and frequency of lectures.
Let them be drilled in composition; by this we mean the writing and
spelling of correct, plain English (a matter not of every-day
occurrence, and not on the increase),--let them be directed to the best
books of the old masters in medicine, and _examined in them_,--let them
be encouraged in the use of a wholesome and manly literature. We do not
mean popular or even modern literature--such as Emerson, Bulwer, or
Alison, or the trash of inferior periodicals or novels--fashion, vanity,
and the spirit of the age, will attract them readily enough to all
these; we refer to the treasures of our elder and better authors. If our
young medical student would take our advice, and for an hour or two
twice a week take up a volume of Shakspeare, Cervantes, Milton, Dryden,
Pope, Cowper, Montaigne, Addison, Defoe, Goldsmith, Fielding, Scott,
Charles Lamb, Macaulay, Jeffrey, Sydney Smith, Helps, Thackeray, &c.,
not to mention authors on deeper and more sacred subjects--they would
have happier and healthier minds, and make none the worse doctors. If
they, by good fortune--for the tide has set in strong against the
_literae humaniores_--have come off with some Greek or Latin, we would
supplicate for an ode of Horace, a couple of pages of Cicero or of Pliny
once a month, and a page of Xenophon. French and German should be
mastered either before or during the first years of study. They will
never afterwards be acquired so easily or so thoroughly, and the want of
them may be bitterly felt when too late.
But one main help, we are persuaded, is to be found in studying, and by
this we do not mean the mere reading, but the digging into and through,
the energizing upon, and mastering such books as we have mentioned at
the close of this paper. These are not, of course, the only works we
would recommend to those who wish to understand thoroughly, and to make
up their minds, on these great subjects as wholes; but we all know too
well that our Art is long, broad, and deep,--and Time, opportunity, and
our little hour, brief and uncertain, therefore, we would recommend
those books as a sort of game of the mind, a mental exercise--like
cricket, a gymnastic, a clearing of the eyes of their mind as with
euphrasy, a strengthening their power over particulars, a getting fresh,
strong views of worn out, old things, and, above all, a learning the
right use of their reason, and by knowing their own ignorance and
weakness, finding true knowledge and strength. Taking up a book like
Arnauld, and reading a chapter of his lively, manly sense, is like
throwing your manuals, and scalpels, and microscopes, and natural (most
unnatural) orders out of your hand and head, and taking a game with the
Grange Club, or a run to the top of Arthur Seat. Exertion quickens your
pulse, expands your lungs, makes your blood warmer and redder, fills
your mouth with the pure waters of relish, strengthens and supples your
legs; and though on your way to the top you may encounter rocks, and
baffling _debris_, and gusts of fierce winds rushing out upon you from
behind corners, just as you will find in Arnauld, and all truly serious
and honest books of the kind, difficulties and puzzles, winds of
doctrine, and deceitful mists; still you are rewarded at the top by the
wide view. You see, as from a tower, the end of all. You look into the
perfections and relations of things. You see the clouds, the bright
lights and the everlasting hills on the far horizon. You come down the
hill a happier, a better, and a hungrier man, and of a better mind. But,
as we said, you must eat the book, you must crush it, and cut it with
your teeth and swallow it; just as you must walk up, and not be carried
up the hill, much less imagine you are there, or look upon a picture of
what you would see were you up, however accurately or artistically done;
no--you yourself must _do_ both.
Philosophy--the love and the possession of wisdom--is divided into two
things, science or knowledge; and a habit, or power of mind. He who has
got the first is not truly wise unless his mind has reduced and
assimilated it, as Dr. Prout would have said, unless he appropriates and
can use it for his need.
The prime qualifications of a physician may be summed up in the words
_Capax_, _Perspicax_, _Sagax_, _Efficax_. _Capax_--there must be room to
receive, and arrange, and keep knowledge; _Perspicax_--senses and
perceptions, keen, accurate, and immediate, to bring in materials from
all sensible things; _Sagax_--a central power of knowing what is what,
and what it is worth, of choosing and rejecting, of judging; and
finally, _Efficax_--the will and the way--the power to turn all the
other three--capacity, perspicacity, sagacity, to account, in the
performance of the thing in hand, and thus rendering back to the outer
world, in a new and useful form, what you had received from it. These
are the intellectual qualities which make up the physician, without any
one of which he would be _mancus_, and would not deserve the name of a
complete artsman, any more than proteine would be itself if any one of
its four elements were amissing.
We have left ourselves no room to speak of the books we have named at
the end of this paper. We recommend them all to our young readers.
Arnauld's excellent and entertaining _Art of Thinking_--the once famous
Port-Royal Logic--is, if only one be taken, probably the best. Thomson's
little book is admirable, and is specially suited for a medical student,
as its illustrations are drawn with great intelligence and exactness
from chemistry and physiology. We know nothing more perfect than the
analysis, at page 348, of Sir H. Davy's beautiful experiments to account
for the traces of an alkali, found when decomposing water by galvanism.
It is quite exquisite, the hunt after and the unearthing of "_the
residual cause_." This book has the great advantage of a clear, lively,
and strong style. We can only give some short extracts.