set of people ever attained it.  How slight the tenure seems!  A young lady happened to walk out, one summer afternoon, and crossed the path of a neighboring farmer, who celebrated the little incident in four or five warm, rude,—­at least, not refined, though rather ambitious,—­and somewhat ploughman-like verses.  Burns has written hundreds of better things; but henceforth, for centuries, that maiden has free admittance into the dream-land of Beautiful Women, and she and all her race are famous!  I should like to know the present head of the family, and ascertain what value, if any, they put upon the celebrity thus won.

We passed through Catrine, known hereabouts as “the clean village of Scotland.”  Certainly, as regards the point indicated, it has greatly the advantage of Mauchline, whither we now returned without seeing anything else worth writing about.

There was a rain-storm during the night, and, in the morning, the rusty, old, sloping street of Mauchline was glistening with wet, while frequent showers came spattering down.  The intense heat of many days past was exchanged for a chilly atmosphere, much more suitable to a stranger’s idea of what Scotch temperature ought to be.  We found, after breakfast, that the first train northward had already gone by, and that we must wait till nearly two o’clock for the next.  I merely ventured out once, during the forenoon, and took a brief walk through the village, in which I have left little to describe.  Its chief business appears to be the manufacture of snuff-boxes.  There are perhaps five or six shops, or more, including those licensed to sell only tea and tobacco; the best of them have the characteristics of village-stores in the United States, dealing in a small way with an extensive variety of articles.  I peeped into the open gateway of the churchyard, and saw that the ground was absolutely stuffed with dead people, and the surface crowded with gravestones, both perpendicular and horizontal.  All Burns’s old Mauchline acquaintance are doubtless there, and the Armours among them, except Bonny Jean, who sleeps by her poet’s side.  The family is now extinct in Mauchline.

Arriving at the railway-station, we found a tall, elderly, comely gentleman walking to and fro and waiting for the train.  He proved to be a Mr. Alexander,—­it may fairly be presumed the Alexander of Ballochmyle, a blood-relation of the lovely lass.  Wonderful efficacy of a poet’s verse, that could shed a glory from Long Ago on this old gentleman’s white hair!  These Alexanders, by-the-by, are not an old family on the Ballochmyle estate; the father of the lass having made a fortune in trade, and established himself as the first landed proprietor of his name in these parts.  The original family was named Whitefoord.