His first impulse on receiving the good news was to rush
down to Luckie Cumstie's and have a double-tumbler. But conscience was
too strong for Satan, and sent him home to his pipe???-which, it must be
confessed, he smoked twice as much as before his reformation.
From the moment of his appointment, he seemed to regard the library as
his own private property, or, rather, as his own family. He was
grandfather to the books: at least a grandfather shows that combination
of parent and servant which comes nearest to the relation he henceforth
manifested towards them. Most of them he gave out graciously; some of
them grudgingly; a few of them with much reluctance; but all of them
with injunctions to care, and special warnings against forcing the
backs, crumpling or folding the leaves, and making thumb-marks.
"Noo," he would say to some country bejan, "tak' the buik i' yer han's
no as gin 'twar a neip (turnip), but as gin 'twar the sowl o' a
new-born bairn. Min' ye it has to sair (serve) mony a generation efter
your banes lie bare i' the moul', an' ye maun hae respec' to them that
come efter ye, and no ill-guide their fare. I beg ye winna guddle't
(mangle it).
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