Masterpieces of British Literature Author:Horace Elisha Scudder Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: DR. JOHN BROWN. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. It happens now and then that a man writes some one story, or sketch, or poem, which goes straight to the heart of peop... more »le. Though he may produce many other things, he is known peculiarly by this one ; and it often happens that he is not a professional author, but it may be a lawyer, or a schoolmaster, a minister, or a doctor, who has written the one notable thing out of some particular experience. Thus, at any rate, it was with Dr. John Brown, a Scottish physician, who one day told the story of Bab and his Friends, and thereupon became as famous among English-speaking people as he was loved and honored in his own town of Edinburgh. He was born September 22, 1810, and has himself told, in one of the tenderest tributes of a son to his father, something of his own childhood in the Scottish manse at Biggar, and more of that father, who was minister of the parish. Brought up in religious ways, he retained through life a simple faith, blended with an exquisite charity for men and women, children and animals, which was seen in his helpful work as a physician and surgeon, in his friendships,—for many both great and obscure people called him friend, — and in his regard for dogs and other animals. " Once, when driving," writes a friend, " he suddenly stopped in the middle of a sentence, and looked out eagerly at the back of the carriage. ' Is it some one you know ? ' I asked. ' No,' he said, ' it's a dog I don't know.' . . . He often used to say that he knew every one in Edinburgh except a few new-comers, and to walk Princes Street with him was to realize that this was nearly a literal fact." Besides Rob and his Friends, Dr. Brown wrote a number of sketches of dogs he had known ; he wrote also a delightful account of Pet Marjorie, a bright ...« less