"I shall intimate my motions as I find them coming up for consideration. I feel very elastic. There is nothing in my mind demanding either hard work or anxious adjustment. The 'Queen Anne' pressed very hard on me before I had done; and the press has rather too justly noticed a slovenliness about the conclusion. Then came immediately various cares and troubles, accompanied by the not very severe, but tedious, drudgery of the index; but I am not going to grumble more, since I am at present in comparative freedom and idleness.--Yours, my dear love, J.H. BURTON."
"MY DEAR LOVE,-- ... The weather here has been divine, with daylight, one may say, for twenty-four hours. The people are kind and cleanly, and all the necessaries of life are abundant. I do not know when I have enjoyed better health. There is nothing abnormal about me, except the extent of my appetite. Walking thirty miles here, is less fatiguing than from Morton to Edinburgh.
"Love to all the household, and remembrances to guests, from yours affectionately, J.H. BURTON."
"DOUGLAS HOTEL, ABERDEEN, _14th July 1880_.
"MY DEAR LOVE,-- ... I had some fun yesterday with a class of people I detest--those who, because a man has been studious, and has written books, count that he is public property, who may be hailed by any one like a mountebank or street musician.
"There were some forty or fifty at dinner, and I found from the tenor of the conversation that I was taken for the American Judge Haliburton, the author of 'Sam Slick,' and other embodiments of smart Yankeyism. No direct question on the point was put to me, and I let the affair take its run, though a good deal to the bewilderment of some people, who I saw really knew me.[21] Good cold weather: seeing one by one the remnants of my generation of school and college friends.--Love to all, from your affectionate
"_P.S._--On Monday I hired a boat, or small ship, and went a-hunting after antiquities. Passing Wire and Rousay, I recalled some association in the names, and I think it was with poor nurse Barbara. I was able to call on Mat.'s old friend, Mrs Burroughs; her husband, now General, was out. They live in great grandeur, on about the dreariest hillside Nature ever created."