The story of his demeanour towards
them is one of the most touching ever written. "Sir Walter speaks to
every man as if they were blood-relations" was the common _formula_ in
which this demeanour was described. Take this illustration. There was
a little hunchbacked tailor, named William Goodfellow, living on his
property (but who at Abbotsford was termed Robin Goodfellow). This
tailor was employed to make the curtains for the new library, and had
been very proud of his work, but fell ill soon afterwards, and Sir
Walter was unremitting in his attention to him. "I can never forget,"
says Mr. Lockhart, "the evening on which the poor tailor died. When
Scott entered the hovel, he found everything silent, and inferred from
the looks of the good women in attendance that the patient had fallen
asleep, and that they feared his sleep was the final one. He murmured
some syllables of kind regret: at the sound of his voice the dying
tailor unclosed his eyes, and eagerly and wistfully sat up, clasping
his hands with an expression of rapturous gratefulness and devotion
that, in the midst of deformity, disease, pain, and wretchedness, was
at once beautiful and sublime.
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