Romances of the Old Town of Edinburgh
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: toup of Bcotoiu F the reader of what I am going to relate for his or her edification, or for perhaps a greater luxury, viz., wonder, should be so unreasonable as to ask for my authority, I shall be tempted, because a little piqued, to say that no one should be too particular about the source of pleasure, inasmuch as, if you will enjoy nothing but what you can prove to be a reality, you will, under good philosophical leadership, have no great faith in the sun?a thing which you never saw, the existence of which you are only assured of by a round figure of light on the back of your eye, and which may be likened to tradition ; so all you have to do is to believe like a good Catholic, and be contented, even though I begin so poorly as to try to interest you in two very humble beings who have been dead for many
...years, and whose lives were like a steeple without a bell in it, the intention of which you cannot understand till your eye reachesthe weathercock upon the top, and then you wonder at so great an erection for so small an object. The one bore the name of William Halket, a young man, who, eight or nine years before he became of much interest either to himself or any other body, was what in our day is called an Arab of the City ?a poor street boy, who didn't know who his father was, though, as for his mother, he knew her by a pretty sharp experience, insomuch as she took from him every penny he made by holding horses, and gave him more cuffs than cakes in return. But Bill got out of this bondage by the mere chance of having been taken a fancy to by Mr Peter Ramsay, innkeeper and stabler, in St Mary's Wynd, (an ancestor, we suspect, of the Ram says of Barnton,) who thought he saw in the City Arab that love of horse-flesh which belongs to the Bedouin, and who accordingly elevate...
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