Nay, even when the snow came once more in defiance of
calendars, it was but a background from which the near genesis
should 'stick fiery off.'
In general he had a lonely walk after his lesson with Miss St. John
was over: there was no one at Rothieden to whom his heart and
intellect both were sufficiently drawn to make a close friendship
possible. He had companions, however: Ericson had left his papers
with him. The influence of these led him into yet closer sympathy
with Nature and all her moods; a sympathy which, even in the stony
heart of London, he not only did not lose but never ceased to feel.
Even there a breath of wind would not only breathe upon him, it
would breathe into him; and a sunset seen from the Strand was lovely
as if it had hung over rainbow seas. On his way home he would often
go into one of the shops where the neighbours congregated in the
evenings, and hold a little talk; and although, with Miss St. John
filling his heart, his friend's poems his imagination, and geometry
and algebra his intellect, great was the contrast between his own
inner mood and the words by which he kept up human relations with
his townsfolk, yet in after years he counted it one of the greatest
blessings of a lowly birth and education that he knew hearts and
feelings which to understand one must have been young amongst them.
He would not have had a chance of knowing such as these if he had
been the son of Dr. Anderson and born in Aberdeen.
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