The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-01-26

John Hume.
 song-"J "Jamie,"
 Mrs. J. Menzies.
 song-"The Battle of Stirling"
 J. Morton.
 "Auld Lang Syne."
 On which the audience rose and joined in singing,
 The Rev, Mir. Bells address on Burns" was in part as follows:
 ADDRESS OF REV. MIR. BELL. Friends and Fellow Scots:
 We are met here this evening 70 commemorate the birth of Scotland's s greatest poet, One hundred and fyrty- eight years ago Robert Burns was born in a clay-biggin at Alloway i2 Ayrshire. Soon after he was born a storm demolished part of the humble dwelling and the mother and bahe had to be sheltered elsewhere. Sueh tar bulent welcome seemed a presage of the later experience of the newcomer.
 Fortune did not make many oe Rob- ert Burns years easy. On the farms at Mount Oliphant and Lochlea he de- seribed the life he lived as "combining the gloom of hermit with the tell of galley slave" Notwithstanding tha industry of the family, misfortune neY- CT was long way off, It should be stated to the credit of the poets father that in the face of serious < ebstacles he managed to secure for his son such an education as was not within easy reach of people in their circumstances. Of Ia Co caxx understood others their manuers and their ways, equal to him. And what was true of the head of the family was not less, true of the eldest son. How conversant he was with human nature and with what consummate skill he could interpret 1t in many of it's moods his works declare. Robert Burns was essentially man of the people and in him we have one who understood the things whereof he spoke. For the most part he lived in, as we'll as wrote about, the world of plain people; their joys were his joys, their sorrows his sorrows, their temptations his ternpta- tions, their tolls and labors were his tolls and labors, and because of this, ever-increasing numbers throughout the world on succeeding anniversaries pf his nativity come together drawn by a common impulse to honor the men- ory of a man whose message was so human that in the great heart of man. kind everywhere a responsive chord is struck. Time passed in this way is not spent in vain, for the tendency of our day is not to bestow too much appre- citation on true greatness; indeed there is danger lest we err on the other side. How widespread has become the in- huence of the plowman poet and Tyr ist. His songs are sung in the homes of rich and poor alike, in the shops, in the mine, in the forest and back woods, in many climes, in the most remote corners of the earth, and not by Scot lands sons alone, but by English speaking peoples wherever found, be- cause they ring so true to human life itself.
 As the poet of love, Burns stands alone. WhenS. fifteen ssyears 4old he composed Handsome Nell ' his first production. You'll recall two of the stanzas:
 'She dresses aye sac clean and neat,
 Bath decent and genteel;
 And then there's something in her gait
 Cars ony dress look weel"
 Iris this in Nelly plaeses me,
 Tis this enchants my soul: For absolutely in my breast
 She reigns without control"
 Our poet was peculiarly susceptible to the charms of the fair sex, as may be imagined from his description of an experience In the little town of Kirke- swald where he went to study with a view to becoming surveyor, (which he never became). These are his words: Went on with high hand with my geometry till a charming fil- cite, who lived next door to the school, overset my trigonometry and set me at a tangent from the sphere of my stud ies." We must be wiling to admit that he sometimes loved not wisely, but too clared that it contained the essence of a thousand love-tales:
 Had we never loved sac kindly Had we never loved sac blindly,--
  Never met-or never parted We had ne'er been broken-hearted.
 It is well to call to mind who they were about whom Burns wrote so many charming things. Could greater praise be paid to any of wealth and station, however high, than he lavished upon the humble daughters of Scotia Who moved in the same sphere as he himself was accustomed to. If he rep resented the sons of toll they as surely represented it's daughters. Listen to his tribute to his wife, Bonnie Jean:" Of a the airts the wind can blau,
 I dearly like the west,
 For there the bonnie lassie lives,
 The lassie lo'e best,
 and about whom he further wrote: If have not got polite tattle, modest manners and fashionable dress, I am not sickened with the multiform curse of boarding school affectation; and I have got the handsomest figure, the sweetest temper, the soundest eonstitu- tion and the kindest heart in the coun- try"
 From what I have said you will agree with me, I am sure, that what ever there may be of beauty and ele- gance in many of the poets lines, there is certainly striking plainness of speech. The artificial distinctions of society were distasteful to Burns. He had positively no use for patronage on