YEAR 1772
ON New-Year’s night, this year, a thing happened, which, in its own
nature, was a trifle; but it turned out as a mustard-seed that grows into
a great tree. One of the elders, who has long been dead and gone, came
to the manse about a fact that was found out in the clachan, and after we
had discoursed on it some time, he rose to take his departure. I went
with him to the door with the candle in my hand—it was a clear frosty
night, with a sharp wind; and the moment I opened the door, the blast
blew out the candle, so that I heedlessly, with the candlestick in my
hand, walked with him to the yett without my hat, by which I took a sore
cold in my head, that brought on a dreadful toothache; insomuch, that I
was obligated to go into Irville to get the tooth drawn, and this caused
my face to swell to such a fright, that, on the Sabbath-day, I could not
preach to my people. There was, however, at that time, a young man, one
Mr. Heckletext, tutor in Sir Hugh Montgomerie’s family, and who had
shortly before been licensed. Finding that I would not be able to preach
myself, I sent to him, and begged he would officiate for me, which he
very pleasantly consented to do, being, like all the young clergy,
thirsting to show his light to the world. ’Twixt the fore and
afternoon’s worship, he took his check of dinner at the manse, and I
could not but say that he seemed both discreet and sincere. Judge,
however, what was brewing, when the same night Mr. Lorimore came and told
me, that Mr. Heckletext was the suspected person anent the fact that had
been instrumental, in the hand of a chastising Providence, to afflict me
with the toothache, in order, as it afterwards came to pass, to bring the
hidden hypocrisy of the ungodly preacher to light. It seems that the
donsie lassie who was in fault, had gone to the kirk in the afternoon,
and seeing who was in the pulpit, where she expected to see me, was
seized with the hysterics, and taken with her crying on the spot, the
which being untimely, proved the death of both mother and bairn, before
the thing was properly laid to the father’s charge.
[Picture: The Precentor]
This caused a great uproar in the parish. I was sorely blamed to let
such a man as Mr. Heckletext go up into my pulpit, although I was as
ignorant of his offences as the innocent child that perished; and, in an
unguarded hour, to pacify some of the elders, who were just distracted
about the disgrace, I consented to have him called before the session.
He obeyed the call, and in a manner that I will never forget; for he was
a sorrow of sin and audacity, and demanded to know why, and for what
reason, he was summoned. I told him the whole affair in my calm and
moderate way; but it was oil cast upon a burning coal. He flamed up in a
terrible passion; threepit at the elders that they had no proof whatever
of his having had any trafficking in the business, which was the case;
for it was only a notion, the poor deceased lassie never having made a
disclosure: called them libellous conspirators against his character,
which was his only fortune, and concluded by threatening to punish them,
though he exempted me from the injury which their slanderous insinuations
had done to his prospects in life. We were all terrified, and allowed
him to go away without uttering a word; and sure enough he did bring a
plea in the courts of Edinburgh against Mr. Lorimore and the elders for
damages, laid at a great sum.
What might have been the consequence, no one can tell; but soon after he
married Sir Hugh’s house-keeper, and went with her into Edinburgh, where
he took up a school; and, before the trial came on, that is to say,
within three months of the day that I myself married them, Mrs.
Heckletext was delivered of a thriving lad bairn, which would have been a
witness for the elders, had the worst come to the worst. This was,
indeed, we all thought, a joyous deliverance to the parish, and it was a
lesson to me never to allow any preacher to mount my pulpit, unless I
knew something of his moral character.
In other respects, this year passed very peaceably in the parish: there
was a visible increase of worldly circumstances, and the hedges which had
been planted along the toll-road, began to put forth their branches, and
to give new notions of orderlyness and beauty to the farmers. Mrs.
Malcolm heard from time to time from her son Charles, on board the
man-of-war the _Avenger_, where he was midshipman; and he had found a
friend in the captain, that was just a father to him. Her second son,
Robert, being out of his time at Irville, went to the Clyde to look for a
berth, and was hired to go to Jamaica, in a ship called the _Trooper_.
He was a lad of greater sobriety of nature than Charles; douce, honest,
and faithful; and when he came home, though he brought no limes to me to
make punch, like his brother, he brought a Muscovy duck to Lady Macadam,
who had, as I have related, in a manner educated his sister Kate. That
duck was the first of the kind we had ever seen, and many thought it was
of the goose species, only with short bowly legs. It was, however, a
tractable and homely beast; and after some confabulation, as my lady
herself told Mrs. Balwhidder, it was received into fellowship by her
other ducks and poultry. It is not, however, so much on account of the
rarity of the creature, that I have introduced it here, as for the
purpose of relating a wonderful operation that was performed on it by
Miss Sabrina, the schoolmistress.
There happened to be a sack of beans in our stable, and Lady Macadam’s
hens and fowls, which were not overly fed at home through the inattention
of her servants, being great stravaigers for their meat, in passing the
door went in to pick, and the Muscovy, seeing a hole in the bean-sack,
dabbled out a crapful before she was disturbed. The beans swelled on the
poor bird’s stomach, and her crap bellied out like the kyte of a Glasgow
magistrate, until it was just a sight to be seen with its head back on
its shoulders. The bairns of the clachan followed it up and down,
crying, the lady’s muckle jock’s aye growing bigger, till every heart was
wae for the creature. Some thought it was afflicted with a tympathy, and
others, that it was the natural way for such-like ducks to cleck their
young. In short, we were all concerned; and my lady, having a great
opinion of Miss Sabrina’s skill, had a consultation with her on the case,
at which Miss Sabrina advised, that what she called the Cæsarean
operation should be tried, which she herself performed accordingly, by
opening the creature’s crap, and taking out as many beans as filled a
mutchkin stoup, after which she sewed it up, and the Muscovy went its way
to the water-side, and began to swim, and was as jocund as ever;
insomuch, that in three days after it was quite cured of all the
consequences of its surfeit.
I had at one time a notion to send an account of this to the _Scots
Magazine_, but something always came in the way to prevent me; so that it
has been reserved for a place in this chronicle, being, after Mr.
Heckletext’s affair, the most memorable thing in our history of this
year.