The Highland monthly - National Library of Scotland

Willie Gillies. 67
correspondence with casual friends, let it not be thought
that these are to be excuses for remissness and negligence
in the case of life-long friends and intimate relations.
Mine forgive me—except my cousin in Canada, who
threatens to visit me with dire revenge when he returns
but I do not forgive myself, nor advise anybody to imitate
my failing.
To be sure, I am a garrulous old man, or however could
I write such a dawdling paragraph, when I meant merely
to tell that on leaving Edinburgh I kept up a correspond-
ence with Willie Gillies, which came to an untimely end by
my habitual failing of forgetting to send punctual replies ?
Two long letters I did punctually answer, and Willie, in
after years, published them in the Journal of Jurisprudence,
being, as he said, humorous dissertations on two greatly
disputed maxims of Roman law. But the next letter from
Willie was a dry formal thing, that propounded no ques-
tions and merely thanked me for my last. He said he
wrote in a hurry, and I thought he would at better leisure
write again, but he did not. There was a silence of six
weeks, and then I resolved to write ; only I resolved and
did not do it. By and bye the casual acquaintance nearly
dropped out of my mind, till one day in the midst of some
meditation, that had no connection with the subject, Willie
Gillies started up before my memory with a vividness and
suddenness which impressed me strongly. I have no desire
to discuss questions above my reach. The spiritual influ-
ences external to man are not better understood or defined
by civilized and learned men than by savages and children.
The millions of invisible beings that walk the earth or
traverse space are only quantities in the high problem of
abstract life, which we presently cannot solve, although the
philosopher and the child may equally believe in their
existence. But there are internal impressions and powers
of mind which force themselves perpetually forward in our
experience of human life, and yet elude the analysis of
reason and the grasp of investigation. The wonderful
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