The Heart of Mid-Lothian - Penn State University

draps o’ milk, and our bits o’ bread, are nearer and dearer
to us than the bread of life!”
Jeanie, not unpleased to hear her father’s thoughts
thus expand themselves beyond the sphere of his immediate
distress, obeyed him, and proceeded to put her
household matters in order; while old David moved from
place to place about his ordinary employments, scarce
showing, unless by a nervous impatience at remaining
long stationary, an occasional convulsive sigh, or twinkle
of the eyelid, that he was labouring under the yoke of
such bitter affliction.
The hour of noon came on, and the father and child sat
down to their homely repast. In his petition for a blessing
on the meal, the poor old man added to his supplication,
a prayer that the bread eaten in sadness of heart, and the
bitter waters of Marah, might be made as nourishing as
those which had been poured forth from a full cup and a
plentiful basket and store; and having concluded his benediction,
and resumed the bonnet which he had laid “reverently
aside,” he proceeded to exhort his daughter to
eat, not by example indeed, but at least by precept.
Sir Walter Scott
189
“The man after God’s own heart,” he said, “washed
and anointed himself, and did eat bread, in order to express
his submission under a dispensation of suffering,
and it did not become a Christian man or woman so to
cling to creature-comforts of wife or bairns”—(here the
words became too great, as it were, for his utterance),—
“as to forget the fist duty,—submission to the Divine will.”
To add force to his precept, he took a morsel on his
plate, but nature proved too strong even for the powerful
feelings with which he endeavoured to bridle it.
Ashamed of his weakness, he started up, and ran out of
the house, with haste very unlike the deliberation of his
usual movements. In less than five minutes he returned,
having successfully struggled to recover his ordinary
composure of mind and countenance, and affected to
colour over his late retreat, by muttering that he thought
he heard the “young staig loose in the byre.”
He did not again trust himself with the subject of his
former conversation, and his daughter was glad to see
that he seemed to avoid farther discourse on that agitating
topic. The hours glided on, as on they must and