He
held my mother in tender memory, perhaps because he was
in the habit of daily contrasting her with Uncle Adam,
whom he detested to the point of frenzy; and he set
down to inheritance from his favourite my own becoming
treatment of himself. On our walks abroad, which soon
became daily, he would sometimes (after duly warning me
to keep the matter dark from "Aadam") skulk into some
old familiar pot-house, and there (if he had the luck
to encounter any of his veteran cronies) he would
present me to the company with manifest pride, casting
at the same time a covert slur on the rest of his
descendants. "This is my Jeannie's yin," he would say.
"He's a fine fallow, him." The purpose of our
excursions was not to seek antiquities or to enjoy
famous prospects, but to visit one after another a
series of doleful suburbs, for which it was the old
gentleman's chief claim to renown that he had been the
sole contractor, and too often the architect besides.
I have rarely seen a more shocking exhibition: the
brick seemed to be blushing in the walls, and the
slates on the roof to have turned pale with shame; but
I was careful not to communicate these impressions to
the aged artificer at my side; and when he would direct
my attention to some fresh monstrosity--perhaps with
the comment, "There's an idee of mine's; it's cheap and
tasty, and had a graand run; the idee was soon stole,
and there's whole deestricts near Glesgie with the
goathic addeetion and that plunth," I would civilly
make haste to admire and (what I found particularly
delighted him) to inquire into the cost of each
adornment.
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