Chapter VIII. Free Speech - Page 2

by his keen eyed old mother on their arrival from the old land six months ago. For a song McNish bought the solid little cottage, he might have had it as a gift but that he would not, restored its roof, cleared out its stone chimney which, more than anything else, had caught the mother's eye, re-set the window panes, added a wee cunning porch, gave its facings a coat of paint, enclosed its bit of flower garden in front and its "kale yaird" in the rear with a rustic paling, and made it, when the Summer had done its work, a bonnie homelike spot which caught the eye and held the heart of the passer-by.

The interior more than fulfilled the promise of the exterior. The big living room with its great stone fireplace welcomed you on opening the porch door. From the living room on the right led two doors, each giving entrance to a tiny bedroom and flanking a larger room known as "the Room."

Within the living room were gathered the household treasures, the Lares and Penates of the little stone rose-covered cottage "at hame awa' ayont the sea." On the mantel a solid hewn log of oak, a miracle of broad-axe work, were "bits o' chiny" rarely valuable as antiques to the knowing connoisseur but beyond price to the old white-haired lady who daily dusted them with reverent care as having been borne by her mother from the Highland home in the far north country when as a bride she came by the "cadger's cairt" to her new home in the lonely city of Glasgow. Of that Glasgow home and of her own home later the walls of the log cottage were eloquent.

The character giving bit of furniture, however, in the living room was a book-case that stood in a corner. Its beautiful inlaid cabinet work would in itself have attracted attention, but not the case but the books were its distinction. The great English poets were represented there in serviceable bindings showing signs of use, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Browning, Keats, and with them in various editions, Burns. Beside the poets Robert Louis had a place, and Sir Walter, as well as Kipling and Meredith and other moderns. But on the shelf that showed most wear were to be found the standard works of economists of different schools from the great Adam Smith to Marx and the lot of his imitators and disciples. This was Malcolm's book-case. There was in another corner near the fire-place a little table and above it hung a couple of shelves for books of another sort, the Bible and The Westminster Confession, Bunyan and Baxter and Fox's Book of Martyrs, Rutherford and McCheyne and Law, The Ten Years' Conflict, Spurgeon's Sermons and Smith's Isaiah, and a well worn copy of the immortal Robbie. This was the mother's corner, a cosy spot where she nourished her soul by converse with the great masters of thought and of conscience.

In this "cosy wee hoosie" Malcolm McNish and his mother passed their quiet evenings, for the days