I remained for several months in delicate and somewhat precarious health. My lungs had received more serious injury than I had at first supposed; and it seemed at one time rather doubtful whether the severe mechanical irritation which had so fretted them that the air-passages seemed overcharged with matter and stone-dust, might not pass into the complaint which it stimulated, and become confirmed consumption. Curiously enough, my comrades had told me in sober earnest--among the rest, Cha, a man of sense and observation--that I would pay the forfeit of my sobriety by being sooner affected than they by the stone-cutter's malady: "a good _bouse_" gave, they said, a wholesome fillip to the constitution, and "cleared the sulphur off the lungs;" and mine would suffer for want of the medicine which kept theirs clean. I know not whether there was virtue in their remedy: it seems just possible that the shock given to the constitution by an overdose of strong drink may in certain cases be medicinal in its effects; but they were certainly not in error in their prediction. Among the hewers of the party I was the first affected by the malady. I still remember the rather pensive than sad feeling with which I used to contemplate, at this time, an early death, and the intense love of nature that drew me, day after day, to the beautiful scenery which surrounds my native town, and which I loved all the more from the consciousness that my eyes might so soon close upon it for ever. "It _is_ a pleasant thing to behold the sun." Among my manuscripts--useless scraps of paper, to which, however, in their character as fossils of the past epochs of my life, I cannot help attaching an interest not at all in themselves--I find the mood represented by only a few almost infantile verses, addressed to a docile little girl of five years, my eldest sister by my mother's second marriage, and my frequent companion, during my illness, in my short walks. TO JEANIE. Sister Jeanie, haste, we'll go To whare the white-starred gowans grow, Wi' the puddock flower o' gowden hue. The snaw-drap white and the bonny vi'let blue. Sister Jeanie, haste, we'll go To whare the blossomed lilacs grow-- To whare the pine-tree, dark an' high, Is pointing its tap at the cloudless sky. Jeanie, mony a merry lay Is sung in the young-leaved woods to-day; Flits on light wing the dragon-flee, An' bums on the flowrie the big red-bee. Down the burnie wirks its way Aneath the bending birken spray, An' wimples roun' the green moss-stane, An' mourns. I kenna why, wi' a ceaseless mane. Jeanie, come; thy days o' play Wi' autumn-tide shall pass away; Sune shall these scenes, in darkness cast, Be ravaged wild by the wild winter blast.