Nor was Scott above introducing his poorer relations to Abbotsford. No old acquaintance or family connections, however remote their station or style of manners, were forgotten or lost sight of. These were welcome guests, whoever might be under his roof; and it was the same with many an old classmate, or the fellow-apprentice who had faced him at the desk when he was proud to earn threepence a page in drudging pen-work. 'To dwell on nothing else,' says Lockhart, 'it was surely a beautiful perfection of real universal humanity and politeness that could enable this great and good man to blend guests so multifarious in one group, or contrive to make them all equally happy with him, with themselves, and with each other.' Whilst, however, Abbotsford was a kind of ever open door to an unparalleled variety of guests, there was another and a much larger company constantly invading its precincts--the great army of the uninvited. Such interruptions were a constant source of worry to Scott. Lockhart counted in one day no fewer than sixteen parties begging admittance. It was impossible at that time, it was said, to pass between Melrose and Abbotsford 'without encountering some odd figure, armed with a sketch-book, evidently bent on a peep at the Great Unknown.' Some came furnished with letters of introduction from friends for whose sake Scott received them cordially, and treated them kindly. Others had no introduction at all, but, pencil and note-book in hand, took the most impertinent liberties with the place and its occupants. On returning to Abbotsford upon one occasion, Lockhart recalls how Scott and he found Mrs. Scott and her daughters doing penance under the merciless curiosity of a couple of tourists who had been with her for some hours. They were rich specimens--tall, lanky young men, both of them rigged out in new jackets and trousers of the Macgregor tartan, the one a lawyer, the other a Unitarian preacher from New England. These gentlemen, when told on their arrival that Scott was not at home, had shown such signs of impatience that the servant took it for granted they must have serious business, and asked if they would wish to speak a word with his lady. They grasped at this, and so conducted themselves in the interview that Mrs. Scott never doubted they had brought letters of introduction to her husband, and invited them accordingly to partake of her luncheon. They had been walking about the house and grounds with her and her daughters ever since that time, and appeared at the porch, when the Sheriff and his party returned to dinner, as if they had been already fairly enrolled on his visiting-list. For the moment he too was taken in; he fancied that his wife must have received and opened their credentials, and shook hands with them with courteous cordiality. But Mrs. Scott, with all her overflowing good nature, was a sharp observer; and she, before a minute had elapsed, interrupted the ecstatic