The most part of the young gentleman's relations were in deep dismay, in consequence of the Laird's refusal to perform his engagement. But one of them, after listening seriously to the narration, instead of being vexed, only laughed immoderately at the whole affair, and said he had never heard any thing so comic and truly ludicrous. "Go your ways home, and mind your business," said he; "you do not know any thing of old uncle Sandy: leave the whole matter to me, and I shall answer for his share of the concern." "You will be answerable at your own cost, then," said the nephew. "If the money is not paid till he advance it, the sum will never be paid on this side of time.--You may as well try to extract it from the rock on the side of the mountain." "Go your ways," said the other. "It is evident that you can do nothing in the business; but were the sum three times the amount of what it is, I shall be answerable for it." It turned out precisely as this gentleman predicted; but no man will conceive old Sandy's motive for refusing that which he was in fact bound to perform: He could not bear to have it known that he had done so liberal and generous an action, and wished to manage matters so, that his nephew might believe the money to have been raised in some other way attended with the utmost difficulty. He could not put his nephew to the same school in which he himself had been taught, namely, the School of Actual Adversity; but he wanted to give him a touch of Ideal Misfortune; that he might learn the value of independence. CHAPTER V. GEORGE DOBSON'S EXPEDITION TO HELL. There is no phenomenon in nature less understood, and about which greater nonsense is written, than dreaming. It is a strange thing. For my part, I do not understand it, nor have I any desire to do so; and I firmly believe that no philosopher that ever wrote knows a particle more about it than I do, however elaborate and subtle the theories he may advance concerning it. He knows not even what sleep is, nor can he define its nature, so as to enable any common mind to comprehend him; and how, then, can he define that ethereal part of it, wherein the soul holds intercourse with the external world?--how, in that state of abstraction, some ideas force themselves upon us, in spite of all our efforts to get rid of them; while others, which we have resolved to bear about with us by night as well as by day, refuse us their fellowship, even at periods when we most require their aid?