Page:Martha Spreull by Zachary Fleming.pdf/18

outcast and benighted populations of these desolate regions into the sheepfolds of the Church. He says, however, that this duty lies to my hand. If it be so, I feel it becomes me to approach the task with befitting modesty, for, albeit I have been collegebred, as they say in the Latin tongue, furor scribendi never was a ruling passion with me, having perceived, on thinking the matter over in early life, that law and literature seldom turned out to be profitable companions unless under the force of transcendent genius. But, this much it befits me to say in justification of the position I have assumed. I have been law adviser to the Spreulls, off and on, for the better part of forty years, and I can honestly testify that the writer of these articles is a woman of great rectitude and of a most unblemished character. Her father was an excellent and worthy man, as may be seen from her own narrative, and as I myself can bear testimony. He was a religious man in the sterner sense of that word, and fell, as his daughter tells us, in the great conflict that culminated in the Disruption of the Kirk of Scotland. By trade he was a cordiner, and bore honourable office in the craft; but though he had a fair business, and was an excellent tradesman, his daughter was left but indifferently provided for at his decease. It has often been a matter of observation with me, however, in my professional life, that the best qualities of an individual are not unfrequently provoked