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one assents to a proposition that I suppose I never would have considered seriously in the heat of youth. You spoke it quite calmly & naturally & I believe few if any had a thought of difference that Sir Walter Scott is the greatest man Scotland has yet produced. Thank you for your kind messages to my wife. We both return them with love to Susie & Alice & the family. Ever yours

Stair A Gillon.

14 CARLTON TERRACE, EDINBURGH.

11 - xii - 1923.

My dear John,

it is really easier to thank you for your warm letter of sympathy than it would have been a month ago. I can feel the healing hand of time already at work but I don't think I shall ever forget the sense of forlornness at the time & for about a fortnight. And yet I know that it is natural inevitable universal & kind that the aged should escape from the narrow half-life of the sick room with its discomforts & the puzzles caused by defective hearing & memory. There were mercifully many days - most days - when she could be really bright & au fait with everything. She had a slight shock again & in 9 days it was over. We had a great many interests in common & I owe a debt of gratitude that can only be repaid by

cherishing her memory.

I was at the dinner as a guest. I was a little tied to my host & you were surrounded & smiled at by Paulin et eo genere omni so I thought I wouldn't butt in. Walter looking younger than ever spotted me but the wolf saw him first. He is very like you. (Did you ever hear the tale that Rosebery was asked how P. got onto a certain board. Self help by Smiles!)

You gave us a most admirable address, and wisely spoke not for the occasion only but for record. I hope to study it at leisure later on. The acoustics of that room are very bad. However I got all but a very few words and I liked the central thought - Common sense - . I'm not sure that with all the detail of research the main features of Scottish History as told in Tales of a Grandfather have greatly altered i.e. the product of a sane mind seeing life steadily & whole. The last novel I read was the Legend in two sittings thrilled from beginning to end, and, if many of your remarks about anticlimax & the solid earth etc I involuntarily applied to the characters & incidents. As one gets older