He was the queerest laddie that ever I had at my school. He had
neither talent nor cleverness; but he made up for both, and, I may
say, more than made up for both, by method and application. Ye would
have said that nature had been in a miserly humour when it made his
brains; but, if it had been niggardly in the quantity, it certainly
had spared no pains in placing them properly. He was the very reverse
o' Solitary Sandy. I never could get Watty to scan a line or construe
a sentence richt in my days. He did not seem to understand the nature
o' words, or, at least, in so far as applied to sentiment, idea, or
fine writing. Figures were Watty's alphabet; and, from his earliest
years, pounds, shillings, and pence were the syllables by which he
joined them together. The abstruser points of mathematics were beyond
his intellect; but he seemed to have a liking for the _certainty_ of
the science, and he manifested a wish to master it. My housekeeper
that then was has informed me that, when a' the rest o' ye wad hae
been selling your copies as waste-paper, for _taffy_, or what some ca'
_treacle-candy_, Watty would only part wi' his to the paper purchaser
for money down; and when ony o' ye took a greenin for the sweet things
o' the shopkeeper, without a halfpenny to purchase one, Watty would
volunteer to lend ye the money until a certain day, upon condition
that ye would then pay him a penny for the loan o' his halfpenny. But
he exhibited a grand trait o' this disposition when he cam to learn
the rule o' _Compound Interest_. Indeed, I need not say he _learned_,
it, for he literally _devoured_ it. He wrought every question in
Dilworth's Rule within two days; and, when he had finished it (for he
seldom had his slate away from my face, and I was half tired wi'
saying to him, "That will do, sir"), he came up to my desk, and, says
he, wi' a face as earnest as a judge--
"May I go through this rule again, sir?"
"I think ye understand it, Watty," said I, rather significantly.
"But I would like to be perfect in it, sir," answered he.
"Then go through it again, Watty," said I, "and I have nae doubt but
ye will be _perfect_ in it very quickly."
I said this wi' a degree o' irony which I was not then, and which I am
not now, in the habit of exhibiting before my scholars; but, from what
I had observed and heard o' him, it betrayed to me a trait in human
nature that literally disgusted me. But I have no pleasure in dwelling
upon his history. Shortly after leaving the school, he was sent up to
London to an uncle; and, as his parents had the means o' setting him
up in the world, he was there to make choice o' a profession. After
looking about the great city for a time, it was the choice and
pleasure o' Cautious Watty to be bound as an apprentice to a
pawnbroker. He afterwards commenced business for himself, and every
day in his life indulging in his favourite study, compound interest,
and, as far as he durst, putting it in practice, he in a short time
became rich. But, as his substance increased, he did not confine
himself to portable articles, or such things as are usually taken in
pledge by the members of his profession; but he took estates in
pledge, receiving the title-deeds as his security; and in such cases
he did exact his compound interest to the last farthing to which he
could stretch it. He neither knew the meaning of generosity nor mercy.
Shakspere's beautiful apostrophe to the latter god-like attribute in
the "Merchant of Venice," would have been flat nonsense in the
estimation of Watty. He had but one answer to every argument and to
every case, and which he laid to his conscience in all his
transactions (if he had a conscience), and that was--"A bargain's a
bargain!" This was his ten times repeated phrase every day. It was the
doctrine by which he swore; and Shylock would have died wi' envy to
have seen Watty exacting his "_pound o' flesh_." I have only to tell
ye that he has been twice married. The first time was to a widow four
years older than his mother, wi' whom he got ten thousand. The second
time was to a maiden lady, who had been a coquette and a flirt in her
day, but who, when the deep crow-feet upon her brow began to reflect
sermons from her looking-glass, became a patroniser of piety and
religious institutions. Watty heard o' her fortune, and o' her
disposition and habits. He turned an Episcopalian, because she was
one. He became a sitter and a regular attender in the same pew in the
church. He began his courtship by opening the pew-door to her when he
saw her coming, before the sexton reached it. He next sought her out
the services for the day in the prayer-book--he had it always open,
and ready to put in her hand. He dusted the cushion on which she was
to sit with his handkerchief, as she entered the pew. He, in short,
showed her a hundred little pious attentions. The sensibility of the
converted flirt was affected by them. At length he offered her his arm
from the pew to the hackney-coach or sedan-chair which waited for her
at the church-door; and, eventually, he led her to the altar in the
seventy-third year of her age; when, to use his own words, he married
her thirty thousand pounds, and took the old woman before the minister
as a witness. Such, sir, is all I know concerning Cautious Watty.
The next o' your auld class-mates that I have to notice (continued Mr.
Grierson) is