by your ingle."

"My dear Mackaye," I said, "you have the most unmerciful way of raising
difficulties, and then leaving poor fellows to lay the ghost for
themselves."

"Hech, then, I'm a'thegither a negative teacher, as they ca' it in the new
lallans. I'll gang out o' my gate to tell a man his kye are laired, but I'm
no obligated thereby to pu' them out for him. After a', nae man is rid o' a
difficulty till he's conquered it single-handed for himsel: besides, I'm na
poet, mair's the gude hap for you."

"Why, then?"

"Och, och! they're puir, feckless, crabbit, unpractical bodies, they poets;
but if it's your doom, ye maun dree it; and I'm sair afeard ye ha' gotten
the disease o' genius, mair's the pity, and maun write, I suppose,
willy-nilly. Some folks' booels are that made o' catgut, that they canna
stir without chirruping and screeking."

However, _aestro percitus_, I wrote on; and in about two years and a half
had got together "Songs of the Highways" enough to fill a small octavo
volume, the circumstances of whose birth shall be given hereafter. Whether
I ever attained to anything like an original style, readers must judge for
themselves--the readers of the same volume I mean, for I have inserted none
of those poems in this my autobiography; first, because it seems too like
puffing my own works; and next, because I do not want to injure the as yet
not over great sale of the same. But, if any one's curiosity is so far
excited that he wishes to see what I have accomplished, the best advice
which I can give him is, to go forth, and buy all the working-men's