I have referred above to my grandmother; it was no slip of the pen:  for by an extraordinary arrangement, in which it is hard not to suspect the managing hand of a mother, Jean Smith became the wife of Robert Stevenson.  Mrs. Smith had failed in her design to make her son a minister, and she saw him daily more immersed in business and worldly ambition.  One thing remained that she might do:  she might secure for him a godly wife, that great means of sanctification; and she had two under her hand, trained by herself, her dear friends and daughters both in law and love—­Jean and Janet.  Jean’s complexion was extremely pale, Janet’s was florid; my grandmother’s nose was straight, my great-aunt’s aquiline; but by the sound of the voice, not even a son was able to distinguish one from other.  The marriage of a man of twenty-seven and a girl of twenty who have lived for twelve years as brother and sister, is difficult to conceive.  It took place, however, and thus in 1799 the family was still further cemented by the union of a representative of the male or worldly element with one of the female and devout.

This essential difference remained unbridged, yet never diminished the strength of their relation.  My grandfather pursued his design of advancing in the world with some measure of success; rose to distinction in his calling, grew to be the familiar of members of Parliament, judges of the Court of Session, and ‘landed gentlemen’; learned a ready address, had a flow of interesting conversation, and when he was referred to as ‘a highly respectable bourgeois,’ resented the description.  My grandmother remained to the end devout and unambitious, occupied with her Bible, her children, and her house; easily shocked, and associating largely with a clique of godly parasites.  I do not know if she called in the midwife already referred to; but the principle on which that lady was recommended, she accepted fully.  The cook was a godly woman, the butcher a Christian man, and the table suffered.  The scene has been often described to me of my grandfather sawing with darkened countenance at some indissoluble joint—­’Preserve me, my dear, what kind of a reedy, stringy beast is this?’—­of the joint removed, the pudding substituted and uncovered; and of my grandmother’s anxious glance and hasty, deprecatory comment, ‘Just mismanaged!’ Yet with the invincible obstinacy of soft natures, she would adhere to the godly woman and the Christian man, or find others of the same kidney to replace them.  One of her confidants had once a narrow escape; an unwieldy old woman, she had fallen from an outside stair in a close of the Old Town; and my grandmother rejoiced to communicate the providential circumstance that a baker had been passing underneath with his bread upon his head.  ’I would like to know what kind of providence the baker thought it!’ cried my grandfather.