imagine that, if he were made a sea-admiral, we could ever live to have
any comfort in the son of our bosom? Would he not, think ye, be obliged
with his ship to sail the salt seas, through foul weather and fair; and,
when he met the French, to fight, hack, and hew them down, lith and limb,
with grape-shot and cutlass; till some unfortunate day or other, after
having lost a leg and an arm in the service, he is felled as dead as a
door-nail, with a cut and thrust over the crown, by some furious rascal
that saw he was off his guard, glowring with his blind e'e another
way?--Ye speak havers, Nanse; what are all the honours of this world
worth? No worth this pinch of snuff I have between my finger and thumb,
no worth a bodle, if we never saw our Benjie again, but he was aye
ranging and rampauging far abroad, shedding human blood; and when we
could only aye dream about him in our sleep, as one that was wandering
night and day blindfold, down the long, dark, lampless avenue of
destruction, and destined never more to visit Dalkeith again, except with
a wooden stump and a brass virl, or to have his head blown off his
shoulders, mast high, like ingan peelings, with some exploding earthquake
of combustible gunpowder.--Call in the laddie, I say, and see what he
would like to be himsell."
Nanse ran but the house, and straightway brought Benjie, who was playing
at the bools, ben by the lug and horn. I had got a glass, so my spirit
was up. "Stand there," I said; "Benjie, look me in the face, and tell me
what trade ye would like to be."
"Trade?" answered Benjie; "I would like to be a gentleman."
Dog on it, it was more than I could thole, and I saw that his mother had
spoiled him; so, though I aye liked to give him wholesome reproof rather
than lift my fist, I broke through this rule in a couple of hurries, and
gave him such a yerk in the cheek with the loof of my hand, as made, I am
sure, his lugs ring, and sent him dozing to the door like a peerie.
"Ye see that," said I, as the laddie went ben the house whingeing; "ye
see what a kettle of fish ye have made o't?"
"Weel, weel," answered Nanse, a wee startled by my strong, decisive way
of managing, "ye ken best, and, I fancy, maun tak' the matter your ain
way. But ye can have no earthly objection to making him a lawyer's
advocatt?"
"I wad see him hanged first," answered I. "What! do you imagine I would
set a son of mine to be a sherry-offisher, ganging about rampauging
through the country, taking up fiefs and robbers, and suspicious
characters, with wauf looks and waur claes; exposed to all manner of evil
communication from bad company, in the way of business; and rouping out
puir creatures that cannot find wherewithal to pay their lawful debts, at
the Cross, by warrant of the Sherry, with an auld chair in ae hand and a
eevery hammer in the ither? Siccan a sight wad be the death o' me."
"What think ye then of the preaching line?" asked Nanse.
"The preaching line!" quo' I--"No, no, that'll never do. Not that I want
respect for ministers, who are the servants of the Most High; but the
truth is, that unless ye have great friends and patronage of the like of
the Duke down by, or Marquis of Lothian up by, or suchlike, ye may preach
yoursell as hoarse as a corbie, from June to January, before onybody will
say, 'Hae, puir man, there's a kirk.' And if no kirk casts up--which is
more nor likely--what can a young probationer turn his hand to? He had
learned no trade, so he can neither work nor want. He daurna dig nor
delve, even, though he were able, or he would be hauled by the cuff of
the neck before his betters in the General Assembly, for having the
impudence to go for to be so bold as dishonour the cloth; and though he
may get his bit orra half-a-guinea whiles, for holding forth in some bit
country kirk, to a wheen shepherds and their dogs, when the minister
himself, staring with the fat of good living and little work, is lying
ill of a bile fever, or has the gout in his muckle toe, yet he has aye
the miseries of uncertainty to encounter; his coat grows bare in the
cuffs, greasy in the neck, and brown between the shouthers; his jawbones
get long and lank, his een sunk, and his head grey wi' vexation, and what
the wise Solomon calls 'hope deferred'; so at long and last, friendless
and penniless, he takes the incurable complaint of a broken heart, and is
buried out of the gate, in some bit strange corner of the kirkyard."
"Stop, stop, gudeman," cried Nanse, half greeting, "that's an awfu'
business; but I daresay it's owre true. But mightna we breed him a
doctor? It seems they have unco profits; and, as he's sae clever, he
might come to be a graduit."
"Doctor!" answered I--"Keh, keh, let that flee stick i' the wa'; it's a'
ye ken about it. If ye was only aware of what doctors had to do and see,
between dwining weans and crying wives, ye would have thought twice
before ye let that out. How de ye think our callant has a heart within
him to look at folk blooding like sheep, or to sew up cutted throats with
a silver needle and silk thread, as I would stitch a pair of trowsers; or
to trepan out pieces of coloured skulls, filling up the hole with an iron
plate; and pull teeth, maybe the only ones left, out of auld women's
heads, and so on, to say nothing of rampauging with dark lanterns and
double-tweel dreadnoughts, about gousty kirkyards, among humlock and long
nettles, the haill night over, like spunkie--shoving the dead corpses,
winding-sheets and all, into corn-sacks, and boiling their bones, after
they have dissected all the red flesh off them, into a big caudron, to
get out the marrow to make drogs of?"
"Eh, stop, stop, Mansie!" cried Nanse holding up her hands.
"Na," continued I, "but it's a true bill--it's as true as ye are sitting
there. And do ye think that any earthly compensation, either gowpins of
gowd by way of fees, or yellow chariots to ride in, with a black servant
sticking up behind, like a sign over a tobacconist's door, can ever make
up for the loss of a man's having all his feelings seared to iron, and
his soul made into whinstone, yea, into the nether-millstone, by being
art and part in sic dark and devilish abominations? Go away wi' siccan
downright nonsense. Hearken, to my words, Nanse, my dear. The happiest
man is he that can live quietly and soberly on the earnings of his
industry, pays his day and way, works not only to win the bread of life
for his wife and weans, but because he kens that idle-set is sinful;
keeps a pure heart towards God and man; and, caring not for the fashion
of this world, departs from it in the hope of going, through the merits
of his Redeemer, to a better."
"Ye are right, after a'," said Nanse, giving me a pat on the shouther;
and finding who was her master as well as spouse--"I'll wad it become me
to gang for to gie advice to my betters. Tak' your will of the business,
gudeman; and if ye dinna mak' him an admiral, just mak' him what ye
like."
Now is the time, thought I to myself, to carry out my point, finding the
drappikie I had taken with Donald M'Naughton, in settling his account for
the green jacket, still working in my noddle, and giving me a power of
words equal to Mr Blouster, the Cameronian preacher,--now is the time,
for I still saw the unleavened pride of womankind wambling within her
like a serpent that has got a knock on the pow, and been cast down but
not destroyed; so taking a hearty snuff out of my box, and drawing it up
first one nostril, then another, syne dighting my finger and thumb on my
breek-knees, "What think ye," said I, "of a sweep? Were it not for
getting their faces blacked like savages, a sweep is not such a bad trade
after a'; though, to be sure, going down lums six stories high,
head-foremost, and landing upon the soles of their feet upon the
hearth-stone, like a kittlin, is no just so pleasant." Ye observe, it
was only to throw cold wayter on the unthrifty flame of a mother's pride
that I said this, and to pull down uppishness from its heathenish temple
in the heart, head-foremost. So I looked to her, to hear how she would
come on.
"Haivers, haivers," said Nanse, birsing up like a cat before a cooley.
"Sweep, say ye? I would sooner send him up wi' Lunardi to the man of the
moon; or see him banished, shackled neck and heels, to Botany Bay."
"A weel, a weel," answered I, "what notion have ye of the packman line?
We could fill his box with needles, and prins, and tape, and hanks of
worsted, and penny thimbles, at a small expense; and, putting a stick in
his hand, send him abroad into the wide world to push his fortune."
The wife looked dumfoundered. Howsoever--"Or breed him a rowley-powley
man," continued I, "to trail about the country frequenting fairs; and
dozing thro' the streets selling penny cakes to weans, out of a basket
slung round the neck with a leather strap; and parliaments, and quality,
brown and white, and snaps well peppered, and gingerbread nits, and so
on. The trade is no a bad ane, if creatures would only learn to be
careful."
"Mansie Wauch, Mansie Wauch, hae ye gane out o' yere wuts?" cried
Nanse--"are ye really serious?"
I saw what I was about, so went on without pretending to mind her. "Or
what say ye to a penny-pie-man? I'fegs, it's a cozy birth, and ane that
gars the cappers birl down. What's the expense of a bit daigh, half an
ounce weight, pirled round wi' the knuckles into a case, and filled half
full o' salt and water, wi' twa or three nips o' braxy floating about
in't? Just naething ava;--and consider on a winter night, when
iceshackles are hinging from the tiles, and stomachs relish what is warm
and tasty, what a sale they can get, if they go about jingling their
little bell, and keep the genuine article. Then ye ken in the afternoon,
he can show that he has two strings to his bow; and have a wheen cookies,
either new baked for ladies' teaparties, or the yesterday's auld
shopkeepers' het up i' the oven again--which is all to ae purpose."
"Are ye really in your seven natural senses--or can I believe my ain een?
I could almost believe some warlock had thrown glamour into them," said
Nanse staring me broad in the face.
"Take a good look, gudewife, for seeing's believing," quo' I; and then
continued, without drawing breath or bridle, at full birr--
"Or if the baking line does not please ye, what say ye to binding him
regularly to a man-cook? There he'll see life in all its variorums.
Losh keep us a', what an insight into the secrets of roasting,
brandering, frying, boiling, baking, and brewing--nicking of geese's
craigs--hacking the necks of dead chickens, and cutting out the tongues
of leeving turkeys! Then what a steaming o' fat soup in the nostrils;
and siccan a collection o' fine smells, as would persuade a man that he
could fill his stomach through his nose! No weather can reach such
cattle: it may be a storm of snow twenty feet deep, or an even-down pour
of rain, washing the very cats off the house tops; when a weaver is
shivering at his loom, with not a drop of blood at his finger nails, and
a tailor like myself, so numb with cauld, that instead of driving the
needle through the claith, he brogs it through his ain thumb--then, fient
a hair care they; but, standing beside a ranting, roaring, parrot-coal
fire, in a white apron and gingham jacket, they pour sauce out of ae pan
into another, to suit the taste of my Lord this, and my Lady that,
turning, by their legerdemain, fish into fowl, and fowl into flesh; till,
in the long run, man, woman, and wean, a' chew and champ away, without
kenning more what they are eating than ye ken the day ye'll dee, or
whether the Witch of Endor wore a demity falderal, or a manco petticoat."
"Weel," cried Nanse, half rising to go ben the house, "I'll sit nae
langer to hear ye gabbling nonsense like a magpie. Mak' Benjie what ye
like; but ye'll mak' me greet the een out o' my head."
"Hooly and fairly," said I; "Nanse, sit still like a woman, and hear me
out;" so, giving her a pat on the shouther, she sat her ways down, and I
resumed my discourse.
"Ye've heard, gudewife, from Benjie's own mouth, that he has made up his
mind to follow out the trade of a gentleman;--who has put such outrageous
notions in his head I'm sure I'll not pretend to guess at. Having never
myself been above daily bread, and constant work--when I could get it--I
dare not presume to speak from experience: but this I can say, from
having some acquaintances in the line, that, of all easy lives, commend
me to that of a gentleman's gentleman. It's true he's caa'd a flunky,
which does not sound quite the thing; but what of that? what's in a name?
pugh! it does not signify a bawbee--no, nor that pinch of snuff: for, if
we descend to particulars, we're all flunkies together, except his
Majesty on the throne.--Then William Pitt is his flunky--and half the
house of Commons are his flunkies, doing what he bids them, right or
wrong, and no daring to disobey orders, not for the hair in their
heads--then the Earl waits on my Lord Duke--Sir Something waits on my
Lord Somebody--and his tenant, Mr So-and-so, waits on him--and Mr
So-and-so has his butler--and the butler has his flunky--and the
shoeblack brushes the flunky's jacket--and so on. We all hang at one
another's tails like a rope of ingans--so ye observe, that any such
objection in the sight of a philosopher like our Benjie, would not weigh
a straw's weight.
"Then consider, for a moment--just consider, gudewife--what company a
flunky is every day taken up with, standing behind the chairs, and
helping to clean plates and porter; and the manners he cannot help
learning, if he is in the smallest gleg in the uptake, so that, when out
of livery, it is the toss up of a halfpenny whether ye find out the
difference between the man and the master. He learns, in fact,
everything. He learns French--he learns dancing in all its branches--he
learns how to give boots the finishing polish--he learns how to play at
cards, as if he had been born and bred an Earl--he learns, from pouring
the bottles, the names of every wine brewed abroad--he learns how to
brush a coat, so that, after six months' tear and wear, one without
spectacles would imagine it had only gotten the finishing stitch on the
Saturday night before; and he learns to play on the flute, and the
spinnet, and the piano, and the fiddle, and the bagpipes; and to sing all
manner of songs, and to skirl, full gallop, with such a pith and birr,
that though he was to lose his precious eyesight with the small-pox, or a
flash of forked lightning, or fall down a three-story stair dead drunk,
smash his legs to such a degree that both of them required to be cut off,
above the knees, half an hour after, so far all right and well--for he
could just tear off his shoulder-knot, and make a perfect fortune--in the
one case, in being led from door to door by a ragged laddie, with a
string at the button-hole, playing 'Ower the Border,' 'The Hen's March,'
'Donald M'Donald,' 'Jenny Nettles,' and such like grand tunes, on the
clarinet; or, in the other case, being drawn from town to town, and from
door to door, on a hurdle, like a lord, harnessed to four dogs of all
colours, at the rate of two miles in the hour, exclusive of
stoppages.--What say ye, gudewife?"
Nanse gave a mournful look, as if she was frighted I had grown demented,
and only said, "Tak' your ain way, gudeman; ye'se get your ain way for
me, I fancy."
Seeing her in this Christian state of resignation, I determined at once
to hit the nail on the head, and put an end to the whole business as I
intended. "Now, Nanse," quo' I, "to come to close quarters with ye, tell
me candidly and seriously what ye think of a barber? Every one must
allow it's a canny and cozy trade."
"A barber that shaves beards!" said Nanse. "'Od Mansie, ye're surely
gaun gyte. Ye're surely joking me all the time?"
"Joking!" answered I, smoothing down my chin, which was gey an'
rough--"Joking here or joking there, I should not think the settling of
an only bairn in an honourable way of doing for all the days of his
natural life, is any joking business. Ye dinna ken what ye're saying,
woman. Barbers! i'fegs, to turn up your nose at barbers! did ever living
hear such nonsense! But to be sure, one can blame nobody if they speak
to the best of their experience. I've heard tell of barbers, woman,
about London, that rode up this street, and down that other street, in
coaches and four, jumping out to every one that halooed to them, sharping
razors both on stone and strap, at the ransome of a penny the pair; and
shaving off men's beards, whiskers and all, stoop and roop, for a
three-ha'pence. Speak of barbers! it's all ye ken about it. Commend me
to a safe employment, and a profitable. They may give others a nick, and
draw blood, but catch them hurting themselves. They are not exposed to
colds and rheumatics, from east winds and rainy weather; for they sit, in
white aprons, plaiting hair into wigs for auld folks that have bell-pows,
or making false curls for ladies that would fain like to look smart in
the course of nature. And then they go from house to house, like
gentlemen in the morning; cracking with Maister this or Madam that, as
they soap their chins with scented-soap, or put their hair up in marching
order either for kirk or playhouse. Then at their leisure, when they're
not thrang at home, they can pare corns to the gentry, or give
ploughmen's heads the bicker-cut for a penny, and the hair into the
bargain for stuffing chairs with; and between us, who knows--many
rottener ship has come to land--but that some genty Miss, fond of plays,
poems, and novels, may fancy our Benjie when he is giving her red hair a
twist with the torturing irons, and run away with him, almost whether he
will or not, in a stound of unbearable love!"
Here making an end of my discourse, and halting to draw breath, I looked
Nanse broad in the face, as much as to say, "Contradict me if ye daur,"
and, "What think ye of that now?"--The man is not worth his lugs, that
allows his wife to be maister; and being by all laws, divine and human,
the head of the house, I aye made a rule of keeping my putt good. To be
candid, howsoever, I must take leave to confess, that Nanse, being a
reasonable woman, gave me but few opportunities of exerting my authority
in this way. As in other matters, she soon came, on reflection, to see
the propriety of what I had been saying and setting forth. Besides, she
had such a motherly affection towards our bit callant, that sending him
abroad would have been the death of her.
To be sure, since these days--which, alas, and woe's me! are not
yesterday now, as my grey hair and wrinkled brow but too visibly remind
me--such ups and downs have taken place in the commercial world, that the
barber line has been clipped of its profits and shaved close, from a
patriotic competition among its members, like all the rest. Among other
things, hair-powder, which was used from the sweep on the lum-head to the
king on the throne, is only now in fashion with the Lords of Session and
valy-deshambles; and pig-tails have been cut off from the face of the
earth, root and branch. Nevertheless, as I have taken occasion to make
observation, the foundations of the cutting and shaving line are as sure
as that of the everlasting rocks; beards being likely to roughen, and
heads to require polling, as long as wood grows and water runs.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN--"PUGGIE, PUGGIE"--A STORY WITHOUT A TAIL
The welfare of the human race and the improvement of society being my
chief aim, in this record of my sayings and doings through the pilgrimage
of life, I make bold at the instigation of Nanse, my worthy wife, to
record in black and white a remarkably curious thing, to which I was an
eye-witness in the course of nature. I have little reluctance to
consent, not only because the affair was not a little striking in
itself--as the reader will soon see--but because, like AEsop's Fables, it
bears a good moral at the end of it.
Many a time have I thought of the business alluded to, which happened to
take place in our fore-shop one bonny summer afternoon, when I was
selling a coallier wife, from the Marquis of Lothian's upper hill, a yard
of serge at our counter-side. At the time she came in, although busied
in reading an account of one of Buonaparte's battles in the Courant
newspaper, I observed at her foot a bonny wee doggie, with a bushy black
tail, of the dancing breed--that could sit on its hind-legs like a
squirrel, cast biscuit from its nose, and play a thousand other most
diverting tricks. Well, as I was saying, I saw the woman had a pride in
the bit creature--it was just a curiosity like--and had belonged to a
neighbour's son that volunteered out of the Berwickshire militia (the
Birses, as they were called), into a regiment that was draughted away
into Egypt, Malta, or the East Indies, I believe--so, it seems, the lad's
father and mother thought much more about it, for the sake of him that
was off and away--being to their fond eyes a remembrancer, and to their
parental hearts a sort of living keepsake.
After bargaining about the serge--and taking two or three other things,
such as a leather-cap edged with rabbit-fur for her little nevoy--a dozen
of plated buttons for her goodman's new waistcoat, which was making up at
Bonnyrig by Nicky Sharpshears, my old apprentice--and a spotted silk
napkin for her own Sunday neck wear--I tied up the soft articles with
grey paper and skinie, and was handing over the odd bawbees of change,
when, just as she was lifting the leather-cap from the counter, she said
with a terrible face, looking down to the ground as if she was short
sighted, "Pity me! what's that"?
I could not imagine, gleg as I generally am, what had happened; so came
round about the far end of the counter, with my spectacles on, to see
what it was, when, lo and behold! I perceived a dribbling of blood all
along the clean sanded floor, up and down, as if somebody had been
walking about with a cut finger; but, after looking around us for a
little, we soon found out the thief--and that we did.
The bit doggie was sitting cowering and shivering, and pressing its back
against the counter, giving every now and then a mournful whine, so we
plainly saw that everything was not right. On the which, the wife,
slipping a little back, snapped her finger and thumb before its nose, and
cried out--"Hiskie, poor fellow!" but no--it would not do. She then
tried it by its own name, and bade it rise, saying, "Puggie, Puggie!"
when--would ever mortal man of woman born believe it?--its bit black,
bushy, curly tail, was off by the rump--docked and away, as if it had
been for a wager.
"Eh, megstie!" cried the woman, laying down the leather-cap and the
tied-up parcel, and holding out both her hands in astonishment. "Eh, my
goodness, what's come o' the brute's tail? Lovyding! just see, it's
clean gane! Losh keep me! that's awfu'! Div ye keep rotten-fa's about
your premises, Maister Wauch? See, a bonny business as ever happened in
the days of ane's lifetime!"
As a furnishing tailor, as a Christian, and as an inhabitant of Dalkeith,
my corruption was raised--was up like a flash of lightning, or a cat's
back. Such doings in an enlightened age and a civilized country!--in a
town where we have three kirks, a grammar school, a subscription library,
a ladies' benevolent society, a mechanics' institution, and a debating
club! My heart burned within me like dry tow; and I could mostly have
jumped up to the ceiling with vexation and anger--seeing as plain as a
pikestaff, though the simple woman did not, that it was the handiwork of
none other than our neighbour Reuben Cursecowl, the butcher. Dog on it,
it was too bad--it was a rascally transaction; so, come of it what would,
I could not find it in my heart to screen him. "I'll wager, however,"
said I, in a kind of off-hand way, not wishing exactly, ye observe, to be
seen in the business, "that it will have been running away with
beef-steaks, mutton-chops, sheep feet, or something else out of the
booth; and some of his prentice laddies may have come across its
hind-quarters accidentally with the cleaver."