But I took care that we should have dancing in moderation.  It would not do for people either to get weary with recreation, or excited with what was not worthy of producing such an effect.  Indeed we had only six country dances during the evening.  That was all.  And between the dances I read two or three of Wordsworth’s ballads to them, and they listened even with more interest than I had been able to hope for.  The fact was, that the happy and free hearted mood they were in “enabled the judgment.”  I wish one knew always by what musical spell to produce the right mood for receiving and reflecting a matter as it really is.  Every true poem carries this spell with it in its own music, which it sends out before it as a harbinger, or properly a HERBERGER, to prepare a harbour or lodging for it.  But then it needs a quiet mood first of all, to let this music be listened to.

For I thought with myself, if I could get them to like poetry and beautiful things in words, it would not only do them good, but help them to see what is in the Bible, and therefore to love it more.  For I never could believe that a man who did not find God in other places as well as in the Bible ever found Him there at all.  And I always thought, that to find God in other books enabled us to see clearly that he was more in the Bible than in any other book, or all other books put together.

After supper we had a little more singing.  And to my satisfaction nothing came to my eyes or ears, during the whole evening, that was undignified or ill-bred.  Of course, I knew that many of them must have two behaviours, and that now they were on their good behaviour.  But I thought the oftener such were put on their good behaviour, giving them the opportunity of finding out how nice it was, the better.  It might make them ashamed of the other at last.

There were many little bits of conversation I overheard, which I should like to give my readers; but I cannot dwell longer upon this part of my Annals.  Especially I should have enjoyed recording one piece of talk, in which Old Rogers was evidently trying to move a more directly religious feeling in the mind of Dr Duncan.  I thought I could see that the difficulty with the noble old gentleman was one of expression.  But after all the old foremast-man was a seer of the Kingdom; and the other, with all his refinement, and education, and goodness too, was but a child in it.

Before we parted, I gave to each of my guests a sheet of Christmas Carols, gathered from the older portions of our literature.  For most of the modern hymns are to my mind neither milk nor meat—­mere wretched imitations.  There were a few curious words and idioms in these, but I thought it better to leave them as they were; for they might set them inquiring, and give me an opportunity of interesting them further, some time or other, in the history of a word; for, in their ups and downs of fortune, words fare very much like human beings.