I do not think I had before this event formed, any idea, of death, or that I had even heard of that final consummation of all that lives.

The first acquaintance which I formed with it deprived me of my only relation.
A clergyman of venerable appearance, our only visitor, was my guide and companion in a journey of considerable length; and in the charge of another elderly man, substituted in his place, I know not how or why, I completed my journey to Scotland--and this is all I recollect.
I repeat the little history now, as I have a hundred times before, merely because I would wring some sense out of it.

Turn, then, thy sharp, wire-drawing, lawyer-like ingenuity to the same task--make up my history as though thou wert shaping the blundering allegations of some blue-bonneted, hard-headed client, into a condescendence of facts and circumstances, and thou shalt be, not my Apollo--QUID TIBI CUM LYRA ?--but my Lord Stair, [Celebrated as a Scottish lawyer.] Meanwhile, I have written myself out of my melancholy and blue devils, merely by prosing about them; so I will now converse half an hour with Roan Robin in his stall--the rascal knows me already, and snickers whenever I cross the threshold of the stable.
The black which you bestrode yesterday morning promises to be an admirable roadster, and ambled as easily with Sam and the portmanteau, as with you and your load of law-learning.

Sam promises to be steady, and has hitherto been so.

No long trial, you will say.