. The land of heather . arbolton. Here the father died,and as Burns was the eldest of the seven children, theresponsibility of managing the farm fell on his shoul-ders. He did not make it pay, and his troubles mul-tiplied. Meanwhile he had produced a considerable amountof verse, and at length he tried the experiment of put-ting it into book form. The edition was printed athis own expense, and consisted of only six hundredcopies. Yet these were quickly sold, and left himtwenty pounds profit. What was of more impor-tance, it won him friends in the literary world, whoencouraged him to seek a publ
. The land of heather . arbolton. Here the father died,and as Burns was the eldest of the seven children, theresponsibility of managing the farm fell on his shoul-ders. He did not make it pay, and his troubles mul-tiplied. Meanwhile he had produced a considerable amountof verse, and at length he tried the experiment of put-ting it into book form. The edition was printed athis own expense, and consisted of only six hundredcopies. Yet these were quickly sold, and left himtwenty pounds profit. What was of more impor-tance, it won him friends in the literary world, whoencouraged him to seek a publisher in he did successfully, and the demand for hispoems in the following year made him master ofabout five hundred pounds. Now he felt himself tobe independent, and he loaned a part of his wealthto his brother Gilbert, and with the rest took a farmnear Dumfries, resolved to settle himself permanentlyin the occupation of agriculture. On this farm, withhis wife and children, he spent what were perhaps the. The Brig o Doon A Burns Pilgrimage 243 happiest and most tranquil days of his life. Unfortu-nately these were not destined to last. In the courseof a few years he had exhausted his resources. Thesoil yielded poetry, but not, in his case, a living, andthenceforth he made his home in Dumfries. Therehe found employment in the service of the govern-ment as an exciseman at a salary of seventy pounds ayear, and this meagre income necessitated the utmosteconomy. As compared with Ayr, which is unusually cleanand tidy for a Scotch town, Dumfries is dirty One feels that it is not nearly so much inharmony with the poet as the quiet pastoral regionabout his birthplace, with its fine trees and level house in which Burns lived when he moved fromthe farm is a plain three-story tenement near the river,with other houses elbowing it on either side. A singleupper floor, consisting of a little kitchen and two otherrooms, was all he occupied. At the end of e
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