Memoir of John Veitch

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1896 Excerpt: ... joy. You know, if I were a woman and had a lover, I should take him that walk by the hags of Winterhope, and if he bogged (as is exceedingly likely), I should leave him there as a goodly riddance, and return home rejoicing in freedom from future tyranny and cares! Do you know, says a letter of later date, after a certain heart-stirring stretch, that an old automaton walked from the Douglas Stones to The Loaning in three hours, burdened with knapsack and plaid.... Alas! the years that are on me, and the young heart that is in me! It was, as we know, long before these heavy years, and while he was still light of foot as of heart, that the raids began and the habit of daily tramping across country established. He was lost without the afternoon with nature. Summer and winter, in town or in country, at home or abroad, it mattered not; through Glasgow fog, under Highland mist or Italian sun, he must be up and out to put himself in touch with pure free nature, as he would call it, ... something that might put freshness and suggestion in his heart, and drive the sense of work and worry from his brain. 1 No one who ever enjoyed it, says Professor Knight, could forget a long country walk with Veitch.... I remember once sitting with him far up on the slopes of Manor Head at a green spring-well, and reading to him some unpublished lines of Wordsworth which had reached me shortly before. They touched him to the quick, and led him on to talk, and to quote much from other poets in a similar strain, as we wandered on to Dollar Law, and descended on the other side of the range. He was at his very best.... We traced out part of the old raiders' road, and his conversation on the History and Poetry of the Border was all touched by poetic fire. One felt how the war...