Burlington weekly free press. [volume] (Burlington, Vt.) 1866-1928, 1885-10-02
CHAPTER XXXII.
THE DOWN WARD WAY.

THE DOWNWARD WAY.
With fatal certainty he was going
from bad to worse, and there was no one
to warn him and if any one had warned
him. probably he would not have cared.
Life had come to be for him a hopeless
and useless thing. His own instinct had
answered true, when the American was
urging him to go and cast himself into the
eager strife of the world, and press for
ward to the universal goal of wealth and
ease and independence. I'D rather be
WI here the dun deer lie" he had said.
kingsley's poem had taken firm root in
his mind simply because 1t found natural
soil there.
" Nor wadna be clerk, mither, to bide aye
scrabbling DER the sheets o. parchment with
weary, weary pen;
Looking through the lang stane windows at
narrow strip o. sky,
Like laverock in witty cage, until pine
away and die.
"Ye'll bury me 'twiXt the brae and the burn,
in glen far away,
Where may hear the hitchcock craw and
the great harte bray;
And gin my ghast can walk, mither, I'll go
gowering at the sky
The livelong night on the black hill-sdes
where the dun deer lie"
His way of existence up there on the
far hillsides-unlike that of the luckless
outlaW-had been II perfectly happy and
Contented one. His sound common-sense
had put away from him that craving for
fame which has rendered So miserable the
lives of many rustic verse-writers A.; he was
proud OF his occupation, grateful to the
good friends around him, and always in
excellent health and spirits. Another
thing has to be said-to pacify the worthy
folks who imagine that ambition must
necessarily ill the minds of youth had
he come away from that sphere of careless
content with II sufficient aim to strive for,
perhaps affairs might have gone differ
emily. If it could have been said to him,
Fight your way to the worldly success
that the Americans have so literally
prophesled for You, and then come back,
and you will find Meenie Douglas await
ing you and you shall win her and wear
her, as the rose and crown of your life, in
spite of all the Stuarts of Glengask,n then
the little room in Port Dundas Road would
no longer have been so gray and all the
future would have been filled with light
and hope; and the struggle, however
arduous and long, would have been glad
enough. But with no such hope with in
creasing doubts us to his ultimate success;
and with more dangerously increasing
indifference as TO whether he should ever
reach that success, the temptations of the
passing hour became irresistibly strong.
And he became feebler to resist them. He
did not care. After all, these gay evenings
at the Harmony Club were something to
look forward TO during the long dull days;
with a full glass and good going pipe
and roaring chorus the hours passed
and then from time to time there was the
honor and glory of hearing one of his own
songs sung. He was great figure at
these gatherings now that kind of fame
at least had come to him unsought and
there were not wanting a suttciency of
rather mudde-headed creatures who de-
clared that he was fit to rank with very
distinguished names indeed in the noble
roll-call of Scotland's poets, and who, un-
fortunately, were only too eager to prove
the faith that was in them by asking HIM
to drink at their expense
In this rhyming direction there was one
very curious point: when he began to
turn over the various pieces that might he
made available for Mr.. Jap, he was him
self astonished to find how little melody
there was IN them. Whatever little musi-
cal faculty he had. seemed to be all locked
up in the love verses he had written about
Meenie. Many of the fragments had other
qualities-homely common sense. patriot
Ism, great affection for dumb animals
here and there sometimes a touch of
hurn"r or YathoS: but somehow they did
not Yng. 1t is true that the following
piece