by individuals or by their direct descendants may miss a generation or two, opens a wide field of thought, and collaterals may draw from the original source what was never suspected.  And the Brodies intermarried in such a way as to shock modern ideas.  When my father was asked if a certain Mr. Dudgeon, of Leith, was related to him, he said—­“He is my mother’s cousin and my stepmother’s cousin, and my father-in-law’s cousin, and my mother-in-law’s cousin.”  Except for Spences and Wauchopes there was not a relative of my father that was not related to my mother.  Grandfather Brodie married his cousin, and Grandfather Spence married his late wife, Janet Parks cousin Katherine Swanston.  I cannot see that these close marriages produced degenerates, either physical or mental, in the case of my own family.

Of the twelve months I spent in the old country, I spent six with the dear old aunts.  How proud Aunt Mary was of my third novel, with the sketch of Aunt Margaret in it, of the Cornhill article, and the request from Mr. Wilson to write for The Fortnightly.  I introduced her to new books and especially to new poets; she had never heard of Browning and Jean Ingelow.  She was so much cleverer than her neighbours that I often wondered how she could put up with them.  How conservative these farmers and farmers’ wives and daughters were, to be sure.  These big tenants considered themselves quite superior to tradesmen, even to merchants, unless they were in a big way.  There was infinitely more difference between their standard of living and that of their labourers than between theirs and that of the aristocratic landlords.  James Barnet, the farm steward, said to me—­“you have brought down the price of wheat with your Australian grain, and you do big things in wool, but you can never touch us in meat.”  This was quite true in 1865.  I expected to see some improvement in the farm hamlet, but the houses built by the landlord were still very poor and bare.  The wages had risen a little since 1839, but not much.  The wheaten loaf was cheaper, and so was tea and sugar, but the poor were still living on porridge and bannocks of barley and pease meal instead of tea and white bread.  It was questionable if they were as well nourished.  There were 100 souls living on the farms of Thornton and Thornton Loch.

A short visit from Mrs. Graham to me at Thornton Loch opened up to Aunt Mary some of my treasures of memory.  She asked me to recite “Brother in the Lane,” Hood’s “Tale of a Trumpet,” “Locksley Hall.”  “The Pied Piper,” and Jean Ingelow’s “Songs of Seven.”  She made me promise to go to see her, and find out how much she had to do for her magnificent salary of 30 pounds a year; but she impressed Aunt Mary much.  Mrs. Graham had found that the Kirkbeen folks, among whom she lived, were more impressed by the six months’ experiences of two maiden ladies, who had gone to Valparaiso to join a brother who died, than with her fresh and racy descriptions of four young Australian colonies.  She had seen Melbourne from 1852 to 1855—­a wonderful growth and development.  The only idea the ladies from Valparaiso formed about Australia was that it was hot and must be Roman Catholic, and consequently the Sabbath must be desecrated.  It was in vain that my friend spoke of the Scots Church and Dr. Cairns’s Church.  Heat and Roman Catholicism were inseparably connected in their minds.