INTRODUCTION.

As

S the winter of 1893-1894 approached, it became evident that we were going to have the rare opportunity of celebrating our grandparents' sixtieth wedding-day. Both of them were well and in full possession of their faculties, grandfather riding out from his business regularly, on horseback, and grandmother keeping a lively interest in everything that was going

on.

Feeling the beauty of such an anniversary, and the chance it offered us to show our love and respect to our grandparents, we, their grandchildren, early in the summer of 1893, began to lay our heads together to devise a suitable celebration. We turned naturally to Scott's works, as the success of the "Lady of the Lake" on the golden wedding-day, ten years before, and our grandfather's partiality for Scott and Scotch songs, as well as the Scotch origin of the family, combined to make that field the most available one in which to find an appropriate subject for a play.

The members of the family who had made such a success on the golden wedding, were not available for the dramatization or management of the new play, though they favored us with much valuable advice, — in