5
Master, to the lash of whose resentment you are liable now as before.❊
Cool.— You need not multiply words upon that head, for you are safe with me, and safer, if safer can be, than when I was alive.
Ogil.—Well then, Cool, let me have a peaceable and easy conversation with you for the time we ride together, and give me some information concerning the affairs of the other world for no man inclines to lose his time conversing with the dead, without hearing or learning something useful.
Cool— Well, Sir, I will satisfy you as far as I think proper and convenient. Let me know what information you want.
Ogil.—May I then ask you, if you be in a state of happiness or not?
Cool.—There are a great many things I can answer, that the living are ignorant of; there are a great many things that, notwithstanding the additional knowledge I have acquired since my death, I cannot answer; and there are a great many questions you may start, of which the last is one, that I will not answer.
❊ What I know concerning the matter is this, The servant of Dr Menzies, physician at Dumfries, told my master and many others, that the Lard of Cool lately dead, appeared to him, rode him down, and killed his horse—That he appointed him to meet him some time after, at such a place, which he promised to do: But Mr Paton, then minister of Dumfries, advised him to break his promise. Mr Ogilvie then minister of Innerwick, near Dunbar, on hearing this blamed Mr Paton-much, saying, Had I been there, he would not only have advised him to keep the promise, but have gone with him.
Dunbar, May 4th, 1785.
James Hamilton
Arminian Mag. for 1795.
