YEAR 1764
THIS year well deserved the name of the monumental year in our parish;
for the young laird of the Breadland, that had been my pupil, being
learning to be an advocate among the faculty in Edinburgh, with his lady
mother, who had removed thither with the young ladies her daughters, for
the benefit of education, sent out to be put up in the kirk, under the
loft over the family vault, an elegant marble headstone, with an epitaph
engraven thereon, in fair Latin, setting forth many excellent qualities
which the old laird, my patron that was, the inditer thereof said he
possessed. I say the inditer, because it couldna have been the young
laird himself, although he got the credit o’t on the stone, for he was
nae daub in my aught at the Latin or any other language. However, he
might improve himself at Edinburgh, where a’ manner of genteel things
were then to be got at an easy rate, and doubtless the young laird got a
probationer at the College to write the epitaph; but I have often
wondered sin’ syne, how he came to make it in Latin, for assuredly his
dead parent, if he could have seen it, could not have read a single word
o’t, notwithstanding it was so vaunty about his virtues, and other civil
and hospitable qualifications.
The coming of the laird’s monumental stone had a great effect on me, then
in a state of deep despondency for the loss of the first Mrs. Balwhidder;
and I thought I could not do a better thing, just by way of diversion in
my heavy sorrow, than to get a well-shapen headstone made for her—which,
as I have hinted at in the record of the last year, was done and set up.
But a headstone without an epitaph, is no better than a body without the
breath of life in’t; and so it behoved me to make a poesy for the
monument, the which I conned and pondered upon for many days. I thought
as Mrs. Balwhidder, worthy woman as she was, did not understand the Latin
tongue, it would not do to put on what I had to say in that language, as
the laird had done—nor indeed would it have been easy, as I found upon
the experimenting, to tell what I had to tell in Latin, which is
naturally a crabbed language, and very difficult to write properly. I
therefore, after mentioning her age and the dates of her birth and
departure, composed in sedate poetry the following epitaph, which may yet
be seen on the tombstone.
EPITAPH
A lovely Christian, spouse, and friend,
Pleasant in life, and at her end.—
A pale consumption dealt the blow
That laid her here, with dust below.
Sore was the cough that shook her frame;
That cough her patience did proclaim—
And as she drew her latest breath,
She said, “The Lord is sweet in death.”
O pious reader! standing by,
Learn like this gentle one to die.
The grass doth grow and fade away,
And time runs out by night and day;
The King of Terrors has command
To strike us with his dart in hand.
Go where we will by flood or field,
He will pursue and make us yield.
But though to him we must resign
The vesture of our part divine,
There is a jewel in our trust,
That will not perish in the dust,
A pearl of price, a precious gem,
Ordained for Jesus’ diadem;
Therefore, be holy while you can,
And think upon the doom of man.
Repent in time and sin no more,
That when the strife of life is o’er,
On wings of love your soul may rise,
To dwell with angels in the skies,
Where psalms are sung eternally,
And martyrs ne’er again shall die;
But with the saints still bask in bliss,
And drink the cup of blessedness.
This was greatly thought of at the time, and Mr. Lorimore, who had a
nerve for poesy himself in his younger years, was of opinion that it was
so much to the purpose, and suitable withal, that he made his scholars
write it out for their examination copies, at the reading whereof before
the heritors, when the examination of the school came round, the tear
came into my eye, and every one present sympathized with me in my great
affliction for the loss of the first Mrs. Balwhidder.
Andrew Langshaw, as I have recorded, having come from the Glasgow College
to the burial of his sister, my wife that was, stayed with me a month to
keep me company; and staying with me, he was a great cordial, for the
weather was wet and sleety, and the nights were stormy, so that I could
go little out, and few of the elders came in, they being at that time old
men in a feckless condition, not at all qualified to warsle with the
blasts of winter. But when Andrew left me to go back to his classes, I
was eerie and lonesome; and but for the getting of the monument ready,
which was a blessed entertainment to me in those dreary nights, with
consulting anent the shape of it with John Truel, and meditating on the
verse for the epitaph, I might have gone altogether demented. However,
it pleased Him, who is the surety of the sinner, to help me through the
Slough of Despond, and to set my feet on firm land, establishing my way
thereon.
But the work of the monument, and the epitaph, could not endure for a
constancy, and after it was done, I was again in great danger of sinking
into the hypochonderies a second time. However, I was enabled to fight
with my affliction, and by-and-by, as the spring began to open her green
lattice, and to set out her flower-pots to the sunshine, and the time of
the singing of birds was come, I became more composed, and like myself,
so I often walked in the fields, and held communion with nature, and
wondered at the mysteries thereof.
On one of these occasions, as I was sauntering along the edge of
Eaglesham-wood, looking at the industrious bee going from flower to
flower, and the idle butterfly, that layeth up no store, but perisheth
ere it is winter, I felt as it were a spirit from on high descending upon
me, a throb at my heart, and a thrill in my brain, and I was transported
out of myself, and seized with the notion of writing a book—but what it
should be about, I could not settle to my satisfaction. Sometimes I
thought of an orthodox poem, like _Paradise Lost_, by John Milton,
wherein I proposed to treat more at large of Original Sin, and the great
mystery of Redemption; at others, I fancied that a connect treatise on
the efficacy of Free Grace would be more taking; but although I made
divers beginnings in both subjects, some new thought ever came into my
head, and the whole summer passed away and nothing was done. I therefore
postponed my design of writing a book till the winter, when I would have
the benefit of the long nights. Before that, however, I had other things
of more importance to think about. My servant lasses, having no eye of a
mistress over them, wastered every thing at such a rate, and made such a
galravitching in the house, that, long before the end of the year, the
year’s stipend was all spent, and I did not know what to do. At lang and
length I mustered courage to send for Mr. Auld, who was then living, and
an elder. He was a douce and discreet man, fair and well-doing in the
world, and had a better handful of strong common sense than many even of
the heritors. So I told him how I was situated, and conferred with him;
and he advised me, for my own sake, to look out for another wife as soon
as decency would allow, which he thought might very properly be after the
turn of the year, by which time the first Mrs. Balwhidder would be dead
more than twelve months; and when I mentioned my design to write a book,
he said, (and he was a man of good discretion), that the doing of the
book was a thing that would keep, but masterful servants were a growing
evil; so, upon his counselling, I resolved not to meddle with the book
till I was married again, but employ the interim, between then and the
turn of the year, in looking out for a prudent woman to be my second
wife, strictly intending, as I did perform, not to mint a word about my
choice, if I made one, till the whole twelve months and a day, from the
date of the first Mrs. Balwhidder’s interment, had run out.
[Picture: Sabbath Morning]
In this the hand of Providence was very visible, and lucky for me it was
that I had sent for Mr. Auld when I did send, as the very week following,
a sound began to spread in the parish, that one of my lassies had got
herself with bairn, which was an awful thing to think had happened in the
house of her master, and that master a minister of the gospel. Some
there were, for backbiting appertaineth to all conditions, that jealoused
and wondered if I had not a finger in the pie; which, when Mr. Auld
heard, he bestirred himself in such a manful and godly way in my defence,
as silenced the clash, telling that I was utterly incapable of any such
thing, being a man of a guileless heart, and a spiritual simplicity, that
would be ornamental in a child. We then had the latheron summoned before
the session, and was not long of making her confess that the father was
Nichol Snipe, Lord Glencairn’s gamekeeper; and both her and Nichol were
obligated to stand in the kirk: but Nichol was a graceless reprobate, for
he came with two coats, one buttoned behind him, and another buttoned
before him, and two wigs of my lord’s, lent him by the valet-de-chamer;
the one over his face, and the other in the right way; and he stood with
his face to the church-wall. When I saw him from the poopit, I said to
him—“Nichol, you must turn your face towards me!” At the which, he
turned round to be sure, but there he presented the same show as his
back. I was confounded, and did not know what to say, but cried out with
a voice of anger—“Nichol, Nichol! if ye had been a’ back, ye wouldna hae
been there this day;” which had such an effect on the whole congregation,
that the poor fellow suffered afterwards more derision, than if I had
rebuked him in the manner prescribed by the session.
This affair, with the previous advice of Mr. Auld, was, however, a
warning to me, that no pastor of his parish should be long without a
helpmate. Accordingly, as soon as the year was out, I set myself
earnestly about the search for one; but as the particulars fall properly
within the scope and chronicle of the next year, I must reserve them for
it; and I do not recollect that any thing more particular befell in this,
excepting that William Mutchkins, the father of Mr. Mutchkins, the great
spirit-dealer in Glasgow, set up a change-house in the clachan, which was
the first in the parish, and which, if I could have helped, would have
been the last; for it was opening a howf to all manner of wickedness, and
was an immediate get and offspring of the smuggling trade, against which
I had so set my countenance. But William Mutchkins himself was a
respectable man, and no house could be better ordered than his change.
At a stated hour he made family worship, for he brought up his children
in the fear of God and the Christian religion; and although the house was
full, he would go in to the customers, and ask them if they would want
anything for half an hour, for that he was going to make exercise with
his family; and many a wayfaring traveller has joined in the prayer.
There is no such thing, I fear, nowadays, of publicans entertaining
travellers in this manner.