was one day so much struck with my father's earnestness in filling up
some work, that he then and there got up a canvas and made a capital
sketch-portrait of him in oil. It only came into my father's
possession some years after Ramsay's death, and is now in my possession.

[Image] Alexander Nasmyth. After Reinagle's Portrait

Among the many amusing recollections of my father's life in London,
there is one that I cannot resist narrating, because it shows his
faculty of resourcefulness--a faculty which served him very usefully
during his course through life. He had made an engagement with a
sweetheart to take her to Ranelagh, one of the most fashionable places
of public amusement in London. Everybody went in full dress, and the
bucks and swells wore long striped silk stockings. My father, on
searching, found that he had only one pair of silk stockings left.
He washed them himself in his lodging-room, and hung them up before the
fire to dry. When he went to look at them, they were so singed and
burnt that he could not put them on. They were totally useless.
In this sad dilemma his resourcefulness came to his aid. The happy
idea occurred to him of painting his legs so as to resemble stockings.
He went to his water-colour box, and dexterously painted them with
black and white stripes. When the paint dried, which it soon did,
he completed his toilet, met his sweetheart and went to Ranelagh.
No one observed the difference, except, indeed, that he was
complimented on the perfection of the fit, and was asked "where he
bought his stockings?" Of course he evaded the question, and left the
gardens without any one discovering his artistic trick.

My father remained in Allan Ramsay's service until the end of 1778,
when he returned to Edinburgh to practise on his own behalf the