"The moon takes up the wondrous tale,
And nightly to the listening earth
Repeats the story of her birth."
As we passed through Slateford, he spoke of Dr. Belfrage, his
great-hearted friend, of his obligations to him, and of his son, my
friend, both lying together in Colinton churchyard; and of Dr. Dick, who
was minister before him, of the Coventrys, and of Stitchel and
Sprouston, of his mother, and of himself,--his doubts of his own
sincerity in religion, his sense of sin, of God--reverting often to his
dying friend. Such a thing only occurred to me with him once or twice
all my life; and then when we were home, he was silent, shut up,
self-contained as before. He was himself conscious of this habit of
reticence, and what may be called _selfism_ to us, his children, and
lamented it. I remember his saying in a sort of mournful joke, "I have a
well of love; I know it; but it is a _well_, and a _draw_-well, to your
sorrow and mine, and it seldom overflows, but," looking with that
strange power of tenderness as if he put his voice and his heart into
his eyes, "you may always come hither to draw;" he used to say he might
take to himself Wordsworth's lines,--
"I am not one who much or oft delights
To season my fireside with personal talk."