July 14.—­Did task this morning, and believe that I shall get on now very well.  Wrote about five leaves.  I have been baking and fevering myself like a fool for these two years in a room exposed to the south; comfortable in winter, but broiling in the hot weather.  Now I have removed myself into the large cool library, one of the most refreshing as well as handsomest rooms in Scotland, and will not use the study again till the heats are past.  Here is an entry as solemn as if it respected the Vicar of Wakefield’s removal from the yellow room to the brown.  But I think my labours will advance greatly in consequence of this arrangement.  Walked in the evening to the lake.

July 15.—­Achieved six pages to-day, and finished volume i. of Chronicles.  It is rather long; but I think the last story interesting, and it should not be split up into parts.  J.B. will, I fear, think it low; and if he thinks so, others will.  Yet—­vamos.  Drove to Huntly Burn in the evening.

July 16.—­Made a good morning’s work of the Tales.  In the day-time corrected various proofs.  J.B. thinks that in the proposed introduction I contemn too much the occupation by which I have thriven so well, and hints that I may easily lead other people to follow my opinion in vilipending my talents, and the use I have made of them.  I cannot tell.  I do not like, on the one hand, to suppress my own opinion of the flocci-pauci-nihili-pilification with which I regard these things; but yet, in duty to others, I cannot afford to break my own bow, or befoul my own nest, and there may be something like affectation and nolo episcopari in seeming to underrate my own labours; so, all things considered, I will erase the passage.  Truth should not be spoke at all times.  In the evening we had a delightful drive to Ashestiel with Colonel and Miss Ferguson.

July 17.—­I wrote a laborious task; seven pages of Tales.  Kept about the doors all day.  Gave Bogie L10 to buy cattle to-morrow at St. Boswell’s Fair.  Here is a whimsical subject of affliction.  Mr. Harper, a settler, who went from this country to Botany Bay, thinking himself obliged to me for a recommendation to General M’Allister and Sir Thomas Brisbane, has thought proper to bring me home a couple of Emus.  I wish his gratitude had either taken a different turn, or remained as quiescent as that of others whom I have obliged more materially.  I at first accepted the creatures, conceiving them, in my ignorance, to be some sort of blue and green parrot, which, though I do not admire their noise, might scream and yell at their pleasure if hung up in the hall among the armour.  But your emu, it seems, stands six feet high on his stocking soles, and is little better than a kind of cassowary or ostrich.  Hang them! they might [eat] up my collection of old arms for what I know.  It reminds me of the story of the adjutant birds in Theodore Hook’s novel[10].  No; I’ll no Emuses!