John Leech and other papers

Miss Stirling Graham. 171
been one of her early patients. So carefully was it
done that it used to be said that none of those
operated on by Miss Graham ever took smallpox.
In public affairs it was the same thing — always on
the side of the right and the true. She was a life-
long Liberal — liberal in all the senses of the word.
Though intimate with Sir Walter Scott, who has
recorded his admiration of her in one of his diaries,
she consorted mainly with the men of the Edinburgh
Review. Jeffrey, Sydney Smith, Gillies, Cockburn,
Rutherfurd, Murray, and all that great race whom
we had and have not, were among her friends. It
was to her that Sydney Smith made that famous
joke, of the day being so hot that 'he wished he
could put off his flesh and sit in his bones, and let
the wind whistle through them.' In her own county,
where everybody knew her and she knew everybody
and who their forebears were, she will be long
remembered. The love of the people for her and
their pride in her were wonderful. Those who were
nearest to her — the inmates of her household, her
servants, her dependants, her tenants — cherished
for her something like adoration — she was so tender-
hearted, and, interested in all their interests, so
steadfast a friend. So modest was she, so just in
her sense of herself, that every one was at ease with
her, and felt that whatever she did and said and felt
was as real as the material objects about them.