suggesting their date, say five hundred years ago, in the heart of Crusading times and the glory of English chivalry and romance; the vast Cathedral of York, with its worn carvings and quaintly pictured windows, preaching of still remoter days; the outlandish names of streets and courts and byways that stand as a record and a memorial, all these centuries, of Danish dominion here in still earlier times; the hint here and there of King Arthur and his knights and their bloody fights with Saxon oppressors round about this old city more than thirteen hundred years gone by; and, last of all, the melancholy old stone coffins and sculptured inscriptions, a venerable arch and a hoary tower of stone that still remain and are kissed by the sun and caressed by the shadows every day, just as the sun and the shadows have kissed and, caressed them every lagging day since the Roman Emperor’s soldiers placed them here in the times when Jesus the Son of Mary walked the streets of Nazareth a youth, with no more name or fame than the Yorkshire boy who is loitering down this street this moment.

They reached Edinburgh at the end of July and secluded themselves in Veitch’s family hotel in George Street, intending to see no one.  But this plan was not a success; the social stress of London had been too much for Mrs. Clemens, and she collapsed immediately after their arrival.  Clemens was unacquainted in Edinburgh, but remembered that Dr. John Brown, who had written Rab and His Friend, lived there.  He learned his address, and that he was still a practising physician.  He walked around to 23 Rutland Street, and made himself known.  Dr. Brown came forthwith, and Mrs. Clemens speedily recovered under his able and inspiring treatment.

The association did not end there.  For nearly a month Dr. Brown was their daily companion, either at the hotel, or in his own home, or on protracted drives when he made his round of visits, taking these new friends along.  Dr. John was beloved by everybody in Edinburgh, everybody in Scotland, for that matter, and his story of Rab had won him a following throughout Christendom.  He was an unpretentious sovereign.  Clemens once wrote of him: 

His was a sweet and winning face, as beautiful a face as I have ever known.  Reposeful, gentle, benignant; the face of a saint at peace with all the world and placidly beaming upon it the sunshine of love that filled his heart.

He was the friend of all dogs, and of all people.  It has been told of him that once, when driving, he thrust his head suddenly out of the carriage window, then resumed his place with a disappointed look.

“Who was it?” asked his companion.  “Some one you know?”

“No,” he said.  “A dog I don’t know.”

He became the boon companion and playmate of little Susy, then not quite a year and a half old.  He called her Megalopis, a Greek term, suggested by her eyes; those deep, burning eyes that seemed always so full of life’s sadder philosophies, and impending tragedy.  In a collection of Dr. Brown’s letters he refers to this period.  In one place he says: