Part 3

We are indebted for the following--and our readers will be not unwilling to share our obligations--to her sister: “Her birth was 15th January, 1803; her death, 19th December, 1811. I take this from her Bibles.[3] I believe she was a child of robust health, of much vigor of body, and beautifully formed arms, and, until her last illness, never was an hour in bed. She was niece to Mrs. Keith, residing in No. 1 North Charlotte Street, who was _not_ Mrs. Murray Keith, although very intimately acquainted with that old lady. My aunt was a daughter of Mr. James Rae, surgeon, and married the younger son of old Keith of Ravelstone. Corstorphine Hill belonged to my aunt’s husband; and his eldest son, Sir Alexander Keith, succeeded his uncle to both Ravelstone and Dunnottar. The Keiths were not connected by relationship with the Howisons of Braehead, but my grandfather and grandmother (who was), a daughter of Cant of Thurston and Giles-Grange, were on the most intimate footing with _our_ Mrs. Keith’s grandfather and grandmother; and so it has been for three generations, and the friendship consummated by my cousin William Keith marrying Isabella Craufurd.

“As to my aunt and Scott, they were on a very intimate footing. He asked my aunt to be godmother to his eldest daughter Sophia Charlotte. I had a copy of Miss Edgeworth’s ‘Rosamond, and Harry and Lucy’ for long, which was ‘a gift to Marjorie from Walter Scott,’ probably the first edition of that attractive series, for it wanted ‘Frank,’ which is always now published as part of the series, under the title of _Early Lessons_. I regret to say these little volumes have disappeared.

“Sir Walter was no relation of Marjorie’s, but of the Keiths, through the Swintons; and, like Marjorie, he stayed much at Ravelstone in his early days, with his grandaunt Mrs. Keith; and it was while seeing him there as a boy, that another aunt of mine composed, when he was about fourteen, the lines prognosticating his future fame that Lockhart ascribes in his Life to Mrs. Cockburn, authoress of ‘The Flowers of the Forest’:--

“Go on, dear youth, the glorious path pursue Which bounteous Nature kindly smooths for you; Go bid the seeds her hands have sown arise, By timely culture, to their native skies; Go, and employ the poet’s heavenly art, Not merely to delight, but mend the heart.”

Mrs. Keir was my aunt’s name, another of Dr. Rae’s daughters.” We cannot better end than in words from this same pen: “I have to ask you to forgive my anxiety in gathering up the fragments of Marjorie’s last days, but I have an almost sacred feeling to all that pertains to her. You are quite correct in stating that measles were the cause of her death. My mother was struck by the patient quietness manifested by Marjorie during this illness, unlike her ardent, impulsive nature; but love and poetic feeling were unquenched. When Dr. Johnstone rewarded her submissiveness with a sixpence, the request speedily followed that she might get out ere New Year’s day came. When asked why she was so desirous of getting out, she immediately rejoined, ‘Oh, I am so anxious to buy something with my sixpence for my dear Isa Keith.’ Again, when lying very still, her mother asked her if there was anything she wished: ‘Oh yes! if you would just leave the room door open a wee bit, and play ‘The Land o’ the Leal,’ and I will lie and _think_, and enjoy myself’ (this is just as stated to me by her mother and mine). Well, the happy day came, alike to parents and child, when Marjorie was allowed to come forth from the nursery to the parlor. It was Sabbath evening, and after tea. My father, who idolized this child, and never afterwards in my hearing mentioned her name, took her in his arms; and, while walking her up and down the room, she said, ‘Father, I will repeat something to you; what would you like?’ He said, ‘Just choose yourself, Maidie.’ She hesitated for a moment between the paraphrase, ‘Few are thy days, and full of woe,’ and the lines of Burns already quoted, but decided on the latter, a remarkable choice for a child. The repeating these lines seemed to stir up the depths of feeling in her soul. She asked to be allowed to write a poem; there was a doubt whether it would be right to allow her, in case of hurting her eyes. She pleaded earnestly, ‘Just this once’; the point was yielded, her slate was given her, and with great rapidity she wrote an address of fourteen lines, ‘to her loved cousin on the author’s recovery,’ her last work on earth:--

‘Oh! Isa, pain did visit me, I was at the last extremity; How often did I think of you, I wished your graceful form to view, To clasp you in my weak embrace, Indeed I thought I’d run my race: Good care, I’m sure, was of me taken, But still indeed I was much shaken, At last I daily strength did gain, And oh! at last, away went pain; At length the doctor thought I might Stay in the parlor all the night; I now continue so to do, Farewell to Nancy and to you.’

“She went to bed apparently well, awoke in the middle of the night with the old cry of woe to a mother’s heart, ‘My head, my head!’ Three days of the dire malady, ‘water in the head,’ followed, and the end came.”

“Soft, silken primrose, fading timelessly.”

It is needless, it is impossible, to add anything to this: the fervor, the sweetness, the flush of poetic ecstasy, the lovely and glowing eye, the perfect nature of that bright and warm intelligence, that darling child,--Lady Nairne’s words, and the old tune, stealing up from the depths of the human heart, deep calling unto deep, gentle and strong like the waves of the great sea hushing themselves to sleep in the dark; the words of Burns, touching the kindred chord, her last numbers “wildly sweet” traced, with thin and eager fingers, already touched by the last enemy and friend,--_moriens canit_,--and that love which is so soon to be her everlasting light, is her song’s burden to the end.

“She set as sets the morning star, which goes Not down behind the darkened west, nor hides Obscured among the tempests of the sky, But melts away into the light of heaven.”

Cambridge: Stereotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: This favorite dog “died about January, 1809, and was buried, in a fine moonlight night, in the little garden behind the house in Castle Street. My wife tells me she remembers the whole family in tears about the grave, as her father himself smoothed the turf above Camp with the saddest face she had ever seen. He had been engaged to dine abroad that day, but apologized on account of the death of ‘a dear old friend.’”--Lockhart’s _Life of Scott_.]

[Footnote 2: Applied to a pump when it is dry and its valve has lost its “fang”; from the German, _fangen_, to hold.]

[Footnote 3: “Her Bible is before me; _a pair_, as then called; the faded marks are just as she placed them. There is one at David’s lament over Jonathan.”]

MARJORIE FLEMING.

A SKETCH.

BEING THE PAPER ENTITLED

“_PET MARJORIE: A STORY OF CHILD-LIFE FIFTY YEARS AGO._”

BY JOHN BROWN, M. D., AUTHOR OF “RAB AND HIS FRIENDS.”

BOSTON: TICKNOR AND FIELDS. 1864.

DR. BROWN’S WRITINGS.

SPARE HOURS;

BY JOHN BROWN, M. D.

1 vol. 12mo. $1.50.

The author of “Rab and his Friends” scarcely needs an introduction to American readers. By this time many have learned to agree, with a writer in the NORTH BRITISH REVIEW, that “Rab” is, all things considered, the most perfect prose narrative since Lamb’s “Rosamond Gray.”

[From the LONDON TIMES, October 21.]

“Of all the John Browns, commend us to Dr. John Brown, the physician, the man of genius, the humorist, the student of men, women, and dogs. By means of two beautiful volumes he has given the public a share of his by-hours, and more pleasant hours it would be difficult to find in any life.

“Dr. Brown’s master-piece is the story of a dog called ‘Rab.’ The tale moves from the most tragic pathos to the most reckless humor, and could not have been written but by a man of genius. Whether it moves to laughter or to tears, it is perfect in its way, and immortalizes its author.”

RAB AND HIS FRIENDS.

3d edition. 1 vol. 16mo. Paper. 15 cents.

[From the MORNING HERALD.]

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[From CHAMBERS’ JOURNAL.]

“What Landseer is upon canvas, that Dr. Brown is upon paper. The canine family was never before so well represented in literature.”

PET MARJORIE.

1 vol. 16mo. Paper. 25 cents.

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=TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES=

Simple typographical errors have been silently corrected. Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not changed.

Inconsistent quotation marks left as printed.

In order to get proper compatibility for epubs versions, white right pointing index unicode character was replaced by right-pointing double angle quotation mark.