The Life of Mansie Wauch Part 18

At the yearly examination of the school-room by the Presbytery and Maister Wiggie, he aye sat at the head of the form, and never failed getting a clap on the head and a wheen carvies. They that are fathers will not wonder that this made me as proud as a peac.o.c.k; but when they asked his name, and found whose son he was, then the matter seemed to cease being a business of wonder, as n.o.body could suppose that an only bairn, born to me in lawful wedlock, could be a dult. Folk's cleverness--at least I should think so--lies in their pows; and, that allowed, Benjie's was a gey droll one, being of the most remarkable sort of a shape ye ever saw; but, what is more to the purpose both here and hereafter, he was a real good-hearted callant, though as gleg as a hawk and as sharp as a needle. Everybody that had the smallest gumption prophesied that he would be a real clever one; nor could we grudge that we took pains in his rearing--he having been like a sucking-turkey, or a hot-house plant from far away, delicate in the const.i.tution--when we saw that the debt was likely to be paid with bank-interest, and that, by his uncommon cleverality, the callant was to be a credit to our family.

Many and long were the debates between his fond mother and me, what trade we would breed him up to--for the matter now became serious, Benjie being in his thirteenth year; and, though a wee bowed in the near leg, from a suppleness about his knee-joint, nevertheless as active as a hatter, and fit for any calling whatsoever under the sun. One thing I had determined in my own mind, and that was, that he should never with my will go abroad. The gentry are no doubt philosophers enough to bring up their bairns like sheep to the slaughter, and dispatch them as cadies to Bengal and the Cape of Good Hope, as soon as they are grown up; when, lo and behold! the first news they hear of them is in a letter, sealed with black wax, telling how they died of the liver complaint, and were buried by six blacks two hours after.

That was one thing settled and sealed, so no more need be said about it; yet, notwithstanding of Nanse's being satisfied that the spaewife was a deceitful gipsy, perfectly untrustworthy, she would aye have a finger in the pie, and try to persuade me in a coaxing way. "I'm sure," she would say, "ane with half an e'e may see that our son Benjie has just the physog of an admiral. It's a great shame contradicting nature."

"Po, po," answered I, "woman, ye dinna ken what ye're saying. Do ye imagine that, if he were made a sea-admiral, we could ever live to have any comfort in the son of our bosom? Would he not, think ye, be obliged with his s.h.i.+p to sail the salt seas, through foul weather and fair; and, when he met the French, to fight, hack, and hew them down, lith and limb, with grape-shot and cutla.s.s; till some unfortunate day or other, after having lost a leg and an arm in the service, he is felled as dead as a door-nail, with a cut and thrust over the crown, by some furious rascal that saw he was off his guard, glowring with his blind e'e another way?--Ye speak havers, Nanse; what are all the honours of this world worth? No worth this pinch of snuff I have between my finger and thumb, no worth a bodle, if we never saw our Benjie again, but he was aye ranging and rampauging far abroad, shedding human blood; and when we could only aye dream about him in our sleep, as one that was wandering night and day blindfold, down the long, dark, lampless avenue of destruction, and destined never more to visit Dalkeith again, except with a wooden stump and a bra.s.s virl, or to have his head blown off his shoulders, mast high, like ingan peelings, with some exploding earthquake of combustible gunpowder.--Call in the laddie, I say, and see what he would like to be himsell."

Nanse ran but the house, and straightway brought Benjie, who was playing at the bools, ben by the lug and horn. I had got a gla.s.s, so my spirit was up. "Stand there," I said; "Benjie, look me in the face, and tell me what trade ye would like to be."

"Trade?" answered Benjie; "I would like to be a gentleman."

Dog on it, it was more than I could thole, and I saw that his mother had spoiled him; so, though I aye liked to give him wholesome reproof rather than lift my fist, I broke through this rule in a couple of hurries, and gave him such a yerk in the cheek with the loof of my hand, as made, I am sure, his lugs ring, and sent him dozing to the door like a peerie.

"Ye see that," said I, as the laddie went ben the house whingeing; "ye see what a kettle of fish ye have made o't?"

"Weel, weel," answered Nanse, a wee startled by my strong, decisive way of managing, "ye ken best, and, I fancy, maun tak' the matter your ain way. But ye can have no earthly objection to making him a lawyer's advocatt?"

"I wad see him hanged first," answered I. "What! do you imagine I would set a son of mine to be a sherry-offisher, ganging about rampauging through the country, taking up fiefs and robbers, and suspicious characters, with wauf looks and waur claes; exposed to all manner of evil communication from bad company, in the way of business; and rouping out puir creatures that cannot find wherewithal to pay their lawful debts, at the Cross, by warrant of the Sherry, with an auld chair in ae hand and a eevery hammer in the ither? Siccan a sight wad be the death o' me."

"What think ye then of the preaching line?" asked Nanse.

"The preaching line!" quo' I--"No, no, that'll never do. Not that I want respect for ministers, who are the servants of the Most High; but the truth is, that unless ye have great friends and patronage of the like of the Duke down by, or Marquis of Lothian up by, or suchlike, ye may preach yoursell as hoa.r.s.e as a corbie, from June to January, before onybody will say, 'Hae, puir man, there's a kirk.' And if no kirk casts up--which is more nor likely--what can a young probationer turn his hand to? He had learned no trade, so he can neither work nor want. He daurna dig nor delve, even, though he were able, or he would be hauled by the cuff of the neck before his betters in the General a.s.sembly, for having the impudence to go for to be so bold as dishonour the cloth; and though he may get his bit orra half-a-guinea whiles, for holding forth in some bit country kirk, to a wheen shepherds and their dogs, when the minister himself, staring with the fat of good living and little work, is lying ill of a bile fever, or has the gout in his muckle toe, yet he has aye the miseries of uncertainty to encounter; his coat grows bare in the cuffs, greasy in the neck, and brown between the shouthers; his jawbones get long and lank, his een sunk, and his head grey wi' vexation, and what the wise Solomon calls 'hope deferred'; so at long and last, friendless and penniless, he takes the incurable complaint of a broken heart, and is buried out of the gate, in some bit strange corner of the kirkyard."

"Stop, stop, gudeman," cried Nanse, half greeting, "that's an awfu'

business; but I daresay it's owre true. But mightna we breed him a doctor? It seems they have unco profits; and, as he's sae clever, he might come to be a graduit."

"Doctor!" answered I--"Keh, keh, let that flee stick i' the wa'; it's a'

ye ken about it. If ye was only aware of what doctors had to do and see, between dwining weans and crying wives, ye would have thought twice before ye let that out. How de ye think our callant has a heart within him to look at folk blooding like sheep, or to sew up cutted throats with a silver needle and silk thread, as I would st.i.tch a pair of trowsers; or to trepan out pieces of coloured skulls, filling up the hole with an iron plate; and pull teeth, maybe the only ones left, out of auld women's heads, and so on, to say nothing of rampauging with dark lanterns and double-tweel dreadnoughts, about gousty kirkyards, among humlock and long nettles, the haill night over, like s.p.u.n.kie--shoving the dead corpses, winding-sheets and all, into corn-sacks, and boiling their bones, after they have dissected all the red flesh off them, into a big caudron, to get out the marrow to make drogs of?"

"Eh, stop, stop, Mansie!" cried Nanse holding up her hands.

"Na," continued I, "but it's a true bill--it's as true as ye are sitting there. And do ye think that any earthly compensation, either gowpins of gowd by way of fees, or yellow chariots to ride in, with a black servant sticking up behind, like a sign over a tobacconist's door, can ever make up for the loss of a man's having all his feelings seared to iron, and his soul made into whinstone, yea, into the nether-millstone, by being art and part in sic dark and devilish abominations? Go away wi' siccan downright nonsense. Hearken, to my words, Nanse, my dear. The happiest man is he that can live quietly and soberly on the earnings of his industry, pays his day and way, works not only to win the bread of life for his wife and weans, but because he kens that idle-set is sinful; keeps a pure heart towards G.o.d and man; and, caring not for the fas.h.i.+on of this world, departs from it in the hope of going, through the merits of his Redeemer, to a better."

"Ye are right, after a'," said Nanse, giving me a pat on the shouther; and finding who was her master as well as spouse--"I'll wad it become me to gang for to gie advice to my betters. Tak' your will of the business, gudeman; and if ye dinna mak' him an admiral, just mak' him what ye like."

Now is the time, thought I to myself, to carry out my point, finding the drappikie I had taken with Donald M'Naughton, in settling his account for the green jacket, still working in my noddle, and giving me a power of words equal to Mr Blouster, the Cameronian preacher,--now is the time, for I still saw the unleavened pride of womankind wambling within her like a serpent that has got a knock on the pow, and been cast down but not destroyed; so taking a hearty snuff out of my box, and drawing it up first one nostril, then another, syne dighting my finger and thumb on my breek-knees, "What think ye," said I, "of a sweep? Were it not for getting their faces blacked like savages, a sweep is not such a bad trade after a'; though, to be sure, going down lums six stories high, head-foremost, and landing upon the soles of their feet upon the hearth-stone, like a kittlin, is no just so pleasant." Ye observe, it was only to throw cold wayter on the unthrifty flame of a mother's pride that I said this, and to pull down uppishness from its heathenish temple in the heart, head-foremost. So I looked to her, to hear how she would come on.

"Haivers, haivers," said Nanse, birsing up like a cat before a cooley.

"Sweep, say ye? I would sooner send him up wi' Lunardi to the man of the moon; or see him banished, shackled neck and heels, to Botany Bay."

"A weel, a weel," answered I, "what notion have ye of the packman line?

We could fill his box with needles, and prins, and tape, and hanks of worsted, and penny thimbles, at a small expense; and, putting a stick in his hand, send him abroad into the wide world to push his fortune."

The wife looked dumfoundered. Howsoever--"Or breed him a rowley-powley man," continued I, "to trail about the country frequenting fairs; and dozing thro' the streets selling penny cakes to weans, out of a basket slung round the neck with a leather strap; and parliaments, and quality, brown and white, and snaps well peppered, and gingerbread nits, and so on. The trade is no a bad ane, if creatures would only learn to be careful."

"Mansie Wauch, Mansie Wauch, hae ye gane out o' yere wuts?" cried Nanse--"are ye really serious?"

I saw what I was about, so went on without pretending to mind her. "Or what say ye to a penny-pie-man? I'fegs, it's a cozy birth, and ane that gars the cappers birl down. What's the expense of a bit daigh, half an ounce weight, pirled round wi' the knuckles into a case, and filled half full o' salt and water, wi' twa or three nips o' braxy floating about in't? Just naething ava;--and consider on a winter night, when iceshackles are hinging from the tiles, and stomachs relish what is warm and tasty, what a sale they can get, if they go about jingling their little bell, and keep the genuine article. Then ye ken in the afternoon, he can show that he has two strings to his bow; and have a wheen cookies, either new baked for ladies' teaparties, or the yesterday's auld shopkeepers' het up i' the oven again--which is all to ae purpose."

"Are ye really in your seven natural senses--or can I believe my ain een?

I could almost believe some warlock had thrown glamour into them," said Nanse staring me broad in the face.

"Take a good look, gudewife, for seeing's believing," quo' I; and then continued, without drawing breath or bridle, at full birr--

"Or if the baking line does not please ye, what say ye to binding him regularly to a man-cook? There he'll see life in all its variorums.

Losh keep us a', what an insight into the secrets of roasting, brandering, frying, boiling, baking, and brewing--nicking of geese's craigs--hacking the necks of dead chickens, and cutting out the tongues of leeving turkeys! Then what a steaming o' fat soup in the nostrils; and siccan a collection o' fine smells, as would persuade a man that he could fill his stomach through his nose! No weather can reach such cattle: it may be a storm of snow twenty feet deep, or an even-down pour of rain, was.h.i.+ng the very cats off the house tops; when a weaver is s.h.i.+vering at his loom, with not a drop of blood at his finger nails, and a tailor like myself, so numb with cauld, that instead of driving the needle through the claith, he brogs it through his ain thumb--then, fient a hair care they; but, standing beside a ranting, roaring, parrot-coal fire, in a white ap.r.o.n and gingham jacket, they pour sauce out of ae pan into another, to suit the taste of my Lord this, and my Lady that, turning, by their legerdemain, fish into fowl, and fowl into flesh; till, in the long run, man, woman, and wean, a' chew and champ away, without kenning more what they are eating than ye ken the day ye'll dee, or whether the Witch of Endor wore a demity falderal, or a manco petticoat."

"Weel," cried Nanse, half rising to go ben the house, "I'll sit nae langer to hear ye gabbling nonsense like a magpie. Mak' Benjie what ye like; but ye'll mak' me greet the een out o' my head."

"Hooly and fairly," said I; "Nanse, sit still like a woman, and hear me out;" so, giving her a pat on the shouther, she sat her ways down, and I resumed my discourse.

"Ye've heard, gudewife, from Benjie's own mouth, that he has made up his mind to follow out the trade of a gentleman;--who has put such outrageous notions in his head I'm sure I'll not pretend to guess at. Having never myself been above daily bread, and constant work--when I could get it--I dare not presume to speak from experience: but this I can say, from having some acquaintances in the line, that, of all easy lives, commend me to that of a gentleman's gentleman. It's true he's caa'd a flunky, which does not sound quite the thing; but what of that? what's in a name?

pugh! it does not signify a bawbee--no, nor that pinch of snuff: for, if we descend to particulars, we're all flunkies together, except his Majesty on the throne.--Then William Pitt is his flunky--and half the house of Commons are his flunkies, doing what he bids them, right or wrong, and no daring to disobey orders, not for the hair in their heads--then the Earl waits on my Lord Duke--Sir Something waits on my Lord Somebody--and his tenant, Mr So-and-so, waits on him--and Mr So-and-so has his butler--and the butler has his flunky--and the s...o...b..ack brushes the flunky's jacket--and so on. We all hang at one another's tails like a rope of ingans--so ye observe, that any such objection in the sight of a philosopher like our Benjie, would not weigh a straw's weight.

"Then consider, for a moment--just consider, gudewife--what company a flunky is every day taken up with, standing behind the chairs, and helping to clean plates and porter; and the manners he cannot help learning, if he is in the smallest gleg in the uptake, so that, when out of livery, it is the toss up of a halfpenny whether ye find out the difference between the man and the master. He learns, in fact, everything. He learns French--he learns dancing in all its branches--he learns how to give boots the finis.h.i.+ng polish--he learns how to play at cards, as if he had been born and bred an Earl--he learns, from pouring the bottles, the names of every wine brewed abroad--he learns how to brush a coat, so that, after six months' tear and wear, one without spectacles would imagine it had only gotten the finis.h.i.+ng st.i.tch on the Sat.u.r.day night before; and he learns to play on the flute, and the spinnet, and the piano, and the fiddle, and the bagpipes; and to sing all manner of songs, and to skirl, full gallop, with such a pith and birr, that though he was to lose his precious eyesight with the small-pox, or a flash of forked lightning, or fall down a three-story stair dead drunk, smash his legs to such a degree that both of them required to be cut off, above the knees, half an hour after, so far all right and well--for he could just tear off his shoulder-knot, and make a perfect fortune--in the one case, in being led from door to door by a ragged laddie, with a string at the b.u.t.ton-hole, playing 'Ower the Border,' 'The Hen's March,'

'Donald M'Donald,' 'Jenny Nettles,' and such like grand tunes, on the clarinet; or, in the other case, being drawn from town to town, and from door to door, on a hurdle, like a lord, harnessed to four dogs of all colours, at the rate of two miles in the hour, exclusive of stoppages.--What say ye, gudewife?"

Nanse gave a mournful look, as if she was frighted I had grown demented, and only said, "Tak' your ain way, gudeman; ye'se get your ain way for me, I fancy."

Seeing her in this Christian state of resignation, I determined at once to hit the nail on the head, and put an end to the whole business as I intended. "Now, Nanse," quo' I, "to come to close quarters with ye, tell me candidly and seriously what ye think of a barber? Every one must allow it's a canny and cozy trade."

"A barber that shaves beards!" said Nanse. "'Od Mansie, ye're surely gaun gyte. Ye're surely joking me all the time?"

"Joking!" answered I, smoothing down my chin, which was gey an'

rough--"Joking here or joking there, I should not think the settling of an only bairn in an honourable way of doing for all the days of his natural life, is any joking business. Ye dinna ken what ye're saying, woman. Barbers! i'fegs, to turn up your nose at barbers! did ever living hear such nonsense! But to be sure, one can blame n.o.body if they speak to the best of their experience. I've heard tell of barbers, woman, about London, that rode up this street, and down that other street, in coaches and four, jumping out to every one that halooed to them, sharping razors both on stone and strap, at the ransome of a penny the pair; and shaving off men's beards, whiskers and all, stoop and roop, for a three-ha'pence. Speak of barbers! it's all ye ken about it. Commend me to a safe employment, and a profitable. They may give others a nick, and draw blood, but catch them hurting themselves. They are not exposed to colds and rheumatics, from east winds and rainy weather; for they sit, in white ap.r.o.ns, plaiting hair into wigs for auld folks that have bell-pows, or making false curls for ladies that would fain like to look smart in the course of nature. And then they go from house to house, like gentlemen in the morning; cracking with Maister this or Madam that, as they soap their chins with scented-soap, or put their hair up in marching order either for kirk or playhouse. Then at their leisure, when they're not thrang at home, they can pare corns to the gentry, or give ploughmen's heads the bicker-cut for a penny, and the hair into the bargain for stuffing chairs with; and between us, who knows--many rottener s.h.i.+p has come to land--but that some genty Miss, fond of plays, poems, and novels, may fancy our Benjie when he is giving her red hair a twist with the torturing irons, and run away with him, almost whether he will or not, in a stound of unbearable love!"

Here making an end of my discourse, and halting to draw breath, I looked Nanse broad in the face, as much as to say, "Contradict me if ye daur,"

and, "What think ye of that now?"--The man is not worth his lugs, that allows his wife to be maister; and being by all laws, divine and human, the head of the house, I aye made a rule of keeping my putt good. To be candid, howsoever, I must take leave to confess, that Nanse, being a reasonable woman, gave me but few opportunities of exerting my authority in this way. As in other matters, she soon came, on reflection, to see the propriety of what I had been saying and setting forth. Besides, she had such a motherly affection towards our bit callant, that sending him abroad would have been the death of her.

To be sure, since these days--which, alas, and woe's me! are not yesterday now, as my grey hair and wrinkled brow but too visibly remind me--such ups and downs have taken place in the commercial world, that the barber line has been clipped of its profits and shaved close, from a patriotic compet.i.tion among its members, like all the rest. Among other things, hair-powder, which was used from the sweep on the lum-head to the king on the throne, is only now in fas.h.i.+on with the Lords of Session and valy-deshambles; and pig-tails have been cut off from the face of the earth, root and branch. Nevertheless, as I have taken occasion to make observation, the foundations of the cutting and shaving line are as sure as that of the everlasting rocks; beards being likely to roughen, and heads to require polling, as long as wood grows and water runs.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN--"PUGGIE, PUGGIE"--A STORY WITHOUT A TAIL

The welfare of the human race and the improvement of society being my chief aim, in this record of my sayings and doings through the pilgrimage of life, I make bold at the instigation of Nanse, my worthy wife, to record in black and white a remarkably curious thing, to which I was an eye-witness in the course of nature. I have little reluctance to consent, not only because the affair was not a little striking in itself--as the reader will soon see--but because, like AEsop's Fables, it bears a good moral at the end of it.

Many a time have I thought of the business alluded to, which happened to take place in our fore-shop one bonny summer afternoon, when I was selling a coallier wife, from the Marquis of Lothian's upper hill, a yard of serge at our counter-side. At the time she came in, although busied in reading an account of one of Buonaparte's battles in the Courant newspaper, I observed at her foot a bonny wee doggie, with a bushy black tail, of the dancing breed--that could sit on its hind-legs like a squirrel, cast biscuit from its nose, and play a thousand other most diverting tricks. Well, as I was saying, I saw the woman had a pride in the bit creature--it was just a curiosity like--and had belonged to a neighbour's son that volunteered out of the Berwicks.h.i.+re militia (the Birses, as they were called), into a regiment that was draughted away into Egypt, Malta, or the East Indies, I believe--so, it seems, the lad's father and mother thought much more about it, for the sake of him that was off and away--being to their fond eyes a remembrancer, and to their parental hearts a sort of living keepsake.

After bargaining about the serge--and taking two or three other things, such as a leather-cap edged with rabbit-fur for her little nevoy--a dozen of plated b.u.t.tons for her goodman's new waistcoat, which was making up at Bonnyrig by Nicky Sharpshears, my old apprentice--and a spotted silk napkin for her own Sunday neck wear--I tied up the soft articles with grey paper and skinie, and was handing over the odd bawbees of change, when, just as she was lifting the leather-cap from the counter, she said with a terrible face, looking down to the ground as if she was short sighted, "Pity me! what's that"?

I could not imagine, gleg as I generally am, what had happened; so came round about the far end of the counter, with my spectacles on, to see what it was, when, lo and behold! I perceived a dribbling of blood all along the clean sanded floor, up and down, as if somebody had been walking about with a cut finger; but, after looking around us for a little, we soon found out the thief--and that we did.

The bit doggie was sitting cowering and s.h.i.+vering, and pressing its back against the counter, giving every now and then a mournful whine, so we plainly saw that everything was not right. On the which, the wife, slipping a little back, snapped her finger and thumb before its nose, and cried out--"Hiskie, poor fellow!" but no--it would not do. She then tried it by its own name, and bade it rise, saying, "Puggie, Puggie!"

when--would ever mortal man of woman born believe it?--its bit black, bushy, curly tail, was off by the rump--docked and away, as if it had been for a wager.