Chapter 6

RANDOM MEMORIES

II. - THE EDUCATION OF AN ENGINEER

ANSTRUTHER is a place sacred to the Muse; she inspired (really to a
considerable extent) Tennant's vernacular poem ANST'ER FAIR; and I
have there waited upon her myself with much devotion. This was
when I came as a young man to glean engineering experience from the
building of the breakwater. What I gleaned, I am sure I do not
know; but indeed I had already my own private determination to be
an author; I loved the art of words and the appearances of life;
and TRAVELLERS, and HEADERS, and RUBBLE, and POLISHED ASHLAR, and
PIERRES PERDUES, and even the thrilling question of the STRING-
COURSE, interested me only (if they interested me at all) as
properties for some possible romance or as words to add to my
vocabulary. To grow a little catholic is the compensation of
years; youth is one-eyed; and in those days, though I haunted the
breakwater by day, and even loved the place for the sake of the
sunshine, the thrilling seaside air, the wash of waves on the sea-
face, the green glimmer of the divers' helmets far below, and the
musical chinking of the masons, my one genuine preoccupation lay
elsewhere, and my only industry was in the hours when I was not on
duty. I lodged with a certain Bailie Brown, a carpenter by trade;
and there, as soon as dinner was despatched, in a chamber scented
with dry rose-leaves, drew in my chair to the table and proceeded
to pour forth literature, at such a speed, and with such
intimations of early death and immortality, as I now look back upon
with wonder. Then it was that I wrote VOCES FIDELIUM, a series of
dramatic monologues in verse; then that I indited the bulk of a
covenanting novel - like so many others, never finished. Late I
sat into the night, toiling (as I thought) under the very dart of
death, toiling to leave a memory behind me. I feel moved to thrust
aside the curtain of the years, to hail that poor feverish idiot,
to bid him go to bed and clap VOCES FIDELIUM on the fire before he
goes; so clear does he appear before me, sitting there between his
candles in the rose-scented room and the late night; so ridiculous
a picture (to my elderly wisdom) does the fool present! But he was
driven to his bed at last without miraculous intervention; and the
manner of his driving sets the last touch upon this eminently
youthful business. The weather was then so warm that I must keep
the windows open; the night without was populous with moths. As
the late darkness deepened, my literary tapers beaconed forth more
brightly; thicker and thicker came the dusty night-fliers, to
gyrate for one brilliant instant round the flame and fall in
agonies upon my paper. Flesh and blood could not endure the
spectacle; to