The repair of the kirk was undertaken by contract with William Plane, the
joiner, with whom I was in terms at the time anent the bigging of a land
of houses on my new steading at the town-end. A most reasonable man in
all things he was, and in no concern of my own had I a better
satisfaction than in the house he built for me at the conjuncture when he
had the town's work in the kirk; but there was at that period among us a
certain person, of the name of Nabal Smeddum, a tobacconist by calling,
who, up to this season, had been regarded but as a droll and comical body
at a coothy crack. He was, in stature, of the lower order of mankind,
but endowed with an inclination towards corpulency, by which he had
acquired some show of a belly, and his face was round, and his cheeks
both red and sleeky. He was, however, in his personalities, chiefly
remarkable for two queer and twinkling little eyes, and for a habitual
custom of licking his lips whenever he said any thing of pith or
jocosity, or thought that he had done so, which was very often the case.
In his apparel, as befitted his trade, he wore a suit of snuff-coloured
cloth, and a brown round-eared wig, that curled close in to his neck.
Mr Smeddum, as I have related, was in some estimation for his comicality;
but he was a dure hand at an argument, and would not see the plainest
truth when it was not on his side of the debate. No occasion or cause,
however, had come to pass by which this inherent cross-grainedness was
stirred into action, till the affair of reseating the kirk--a measure, as
I have mentioned, which gave the best satisfaction; but it happened that,
on a Saturday night, as I was going soberly home from a meeting of the
magistrates in the clerk's chamber, I by chance recollected that I stood
in need of having my box replenished; and accordingly, in the most
innocent and harmless manner that it was possible for a man to do, I
stepped into this Mr Smeddum, the tobacconist's shop, and while he was
compounding my mixture from the two canisters that stood on his counter,
and I was in a manner doing nothing but looking at the number of
counterfeit sixpences and shillings that were nailed thereon as an
admonishment to his customers, he said to me, "So, provost, we're to hae
a new lining to the kirk. I wonder, when ye were at it, that ye didna
rather think of bigging another frae the fundament, for I'm thinking the
walls are no o' a capacity of strength to outlast this seating."
Knowing, as I did, the tough temper of the body, I can attribute my
entering into an argument with him on the subject to nothing but some
inconsiderate infatuation; for when I said heedlessly, the walls are very
good, he threw the brass snuff-spoon with an ecstasy in to one of the
canisters, and lifting his two hands into a posture of admiration,--cried,
as if he had seen an unco--
"Good! surely, provost, ye hae na had an inspection; they're crackit in
divers places; they're shotten out wi' infirmity in others. In short,
the whole kirk, frae the coping to the fundament, is a fabric smitten wi'
a paralytic."
"It's very extraordinar, Mr Smeddum," was my reply, "that nobody has seen
a' this but yoursel'."
"Na, if ye will deny the fact, provost," quo' he, "it's o' no service for
me to say a word; but there has to a moral certainty been a slackness
somewhere, or how has it happened that the wa's were na subjected to a
right inspection before this job o' the seating?"
By this time, I had seen the great error into the which I had fallen, by
entering on a confabulation with Mr Smeddum; so I said to him, "It' no a
matter for you and me to dispute about, so I'll thank you to fill my
box;" the which manner of putting an end to the debate he took very ill;
and after I left the shop, he laid the marrow of our discourse open to Mr
Threeper the writer, who by chance went in, like mysel', to get a supply
of rappee for the Sabbath. That limb of the law discerning a sediment of
litigation in the case, eggit on Mr Smeddum into a persuasion that the
seating of the kirk was a thing which the magistrates had no legal
authority to undertake. At this critical moment, my ancient adversary
and seeming friend, the dean of guild, happened to pass the door, and the
bickering snuff-man seeing him, cried to him to come in. It was a very
unfortunate occurrence; for Mr M'Lucre having a secret interest, as I
have intimated, in the Whinstone quarry, when he heard of taking down
walls and bigging them up again, he listened with greedy ears to the
dubieties of Mr Threeper, and loudly, and to the heart's content of Mr
Smeddum, condemned the frailty and infirmity of the kirk, as a building
in general.
It would be overly tedious to mention, however, all the outs and ins of
the affair; but, from less to more, a faction was begotten, and grew to
head, and stirring among the inhabitants of the town, not only with
regard to the putting of new seats within the old walls, but likewise as
to the power of the magistrates to lay out any part of the public funds
in the reparation of the kirk; and the upshot was, a contribution among
certain malecontents, to enable Mr Threeper to consult on all the points.
As in all similar cases, the parties applying for legal advice were
heartened into a plea by the opinion they got, and the town-council was
thrown into the greatest consternation by receiving notice that the
malecontents were going to extremities.
Two things I saw it was obligational on me to urge forward; the one was
to go on still with the reparations, and the other to contest the law-
suit, although some were for waiting in the first case till the plea was
settled, and in the second to make no defence, but to give up our
intention anent the new-seating. But I thought that, as we had borrowed
the money for the repairs, we should proceed; and I had a vista that the
contribution raised by the Smeddumites, as they were caller, would run
out, being from their own pockets, whereas we fought with the public
purse in our hand; and by dint of exhortation to that effect, I carried
the majority to go into my plan, which in the end was most gratifying,
for the kirk was in a manner made as good as new, and the contributional
stock of the Smeddumites was entirely rookit by the lawyers, who would
fain have them to form another, assuring them that, no doubt, the legal
point was in their favour. But every body knows the uncertainty of a
legal opinion; and although the case was given up, for lack of a fund to
carry it on, there was a living ember of discontent left in its ashes,
ready to kindle into a flame on the first puff of popular
dissatisfaction.