For a long period of time, I had observed that there was a gradual mixing
in of the country gentry among the town's folks. This was partly to be
ascribed to a necessity rising out of the French Revolution, whereby men
of substance thought it an expedient policy to relax in their ancient
maxims of family pride and consequence; and partly to the great increase
and growth of wealth which the influx of trade caused throughout the
kingdom, whereby the merchants were enabled to vie and ostentate even
with the better sort of lairds. The effect of this, however, was less
protuberant in our town than in many others which I might well name, and
the cause thereof lay mainly in our being more given to deal in the small
way; not that we lacked of traders possessed both of purse and
perseverance; but we did not exactly lie in the thoroughfare of those
mighty masses of foreign commodities, the throughgoing of which left, to
use the words of the old proverb, "goud in goupins" with all who had the
handling of the same. Nevertheless, we came in for our share of the
condescensions of the country gentry; and although there was nothing like
a melting down of them among us, either by marrying or giving in
marriage, there was a communion that gave us some insight, no overly to
their advantage, as to the extent and measure of their capacities and
talents. In short, we discovered that they were vessels made of ordinary
human clay; so that, instead of our reverence for them being augmented by
a freer intercourse, we thought less and less of them, until, poor
bodies, the bit prideful lairdies were just looked down upon by our
gawsie big-bellied burgesses, not a few of whom had heritable bonds on
their estates. But in this I am speaking of the change when it had come
to a full head; for in verity it must be allowed that when the country
gentry, with their families, began to intromit among us, we could not
make enough of them. Indeed, we were deaved about the affability of old
crabbit Bodle of Bodletonbrae, and his sister, Miss Jenny, when they
favoured us with their company at the first inspection ball. I'll ne'er
forgot that occasion; for being then in my second provostry, I had, in
course of nature, been appointed a deputy lord-lieutenant, and the town-
council entertaining the inspecting officers, and the officers of the
volunteers, it fell as a duty incumbent on me to be the director of the
ball afterwards, and to the which I sent an invitation to the laird and
his sister little hoping or expecting they would come. But the laird,
likewise being a deputy lord-lieutenant, he accepted the invitation, and
came with his sister in all the state of pedigree in their power. Such a
prodigy of old-fashioned grandeur as Miss Jenny was!--but neither shop
nor mantuamaker of our day and generation had been the better o't. She
was just, as some of the young lasses said, like Clarissa Harlowe, in the
cuts and copperplates of Mrs Rickerton's set of the book, and an older
and more curious set than Mrs Rickerton's was not in the whole town;
indeed, for that matter, I believe it was the only one among us, and it
had edified, as Mr Binder the bookseller used to say, at least three
successive generations of young ladies, for he had himself given it twice
new covers. We had, however, not then any circulating library. But for
all her antiquity and lappets, it is not to be supposed what respect and
deference Miss Jenny and her brother, the laird, received--nor the small
praise that came to my share, for having had the spirit to invite them.
The ball was spoken of as the genteelest in the memory of man, although
to my certain knowledge, on account of the volunteers, some were there
that never thought to mess or mell in the same chamber with Bodletonbrae
and his sister, Miss Jenny.