Note 468:1 — Chapter XVII

William Smellie, the respectable printer of the Magazine, seems to have led an uneasy life, between the quarrels and the dissipation of his editor, of which he has left some picturesque memorials. Having come one night to Smellie's house on magazine business in a very advanced stage of intoxication, Stuart was charitably put to bed. Roused in the middle of the night by an immense outcry from the awakened editor, Smellie rushed to the bedroom in his night clothes. Stuart sitting up in bed and glaring around him, immediately associated the respectable printer's presence with the places in which he was himself accustomed to waken, and said,—"Smellie, I never expected to find you in such a place: put on your clothes, and go back to your wife and family, I shall never say a word about this." A journey of six miles, from Edinburgh to Musselburgh, made by Stuart and some of his companions, in which, by reason of the abundance of good cheer on the way, they occupied several days, seems to have been fruitful in adventures. One of the party falling asleep among the ashes of a steam engine, wakened in the night, and found himself in the presence of a great red furnace, surrounded by dusky figures clanging bolts and chains. Associating the exhibition with the course of life he had been running, and its probable reward, he was heard to exclaim, "Good God, is it come to this at last!"—See Kerr's Memoirs of Smellie .