Languages & literature > A window in Thrums

A WINDOW IN THRUMS
To those who dwell in great cities Thrums is
only a small place, but what a clatter of life it has
for me when I come to it from my school-house in
the glen. Had my lot been cast in a town I would
no doubt have sought country parts during my
September holiday, but the school-house is quiet
even when the summer takes brakes full of sports¬
men and others past the top of my footpath, and I
was always light-hearted when Craigiebuckle’s cart
bore me into the din of Thrums. I only once
stayed during the whole of my holiday at the
house on the brae, but I knew its inmates for
many years, including Jamie, the son, who was a
barber in London. Of their ancestry I never heard.
With us it was only some of the articles of furniture,
or perhaps a snuff-mull, that had a genealogical tree.
In the house on the brae was a great kettle, called
the boiler, that was said to be fifty years old in the
days of Hendry’s grandfather, of whom nothing
more is known. Jess’s chair, which had carved
arms and a seat stuffed with rags, had been Snecky
Hobart’s father’s before it was hers, and old Snecky
bought it at a roup in the Tenements. Jess’s rarest
possession was, perhaps, the christening robe that