Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume XII Part 6

"What mean you?" said the captain.

"Do ye no recollect," said Lewis, "o' giein a man on a black mare twenty guineas to mak a red-herrin drag across the nose o' Mr Anson?"

"I do," said the captain; "but I did not give him the ring."

"I can a.s.sure ye that ye did, though," said Lewis. "Recollect yoursel."

"I'm not inclined to try to recollect my own stupidity," said the captain. "It is impossible I could be so foolish as to give away my diamond ring, either as a present or by mistake."

"If you're no inclined to do that muckle justice to an injured man, maybe you'll gie me the papers that belang to Mr Anson, by virtue o'

this letter o' authority" (taking out the letter). "Tak your choice."

"The papers, sir," said the captain, getting frightened, "are all I want. I care nothing for the prosecution of the man. It's certainly possible I may have given him the ring by mistake; but how do you account for the portmanteau being in his lover's house?"

Lewis read to him Giles Baldwin's deposition.

"Then," said the captain, "all the evidence against Maxwell is the ring?"

"Naething mair," said Lewis.

"He shall not be hanged for that," said the captain. "I shall go off to the authorities, and inform them that it is very probable I gave the man the ring in the way you mention. You say nothing of Mr Anson and the papers, you know."

"I canna interfere, luckily," said Lewis.

On the statement of Captain Beachum, Mike was liberated. He afterwards took a farm, married Alice Parker, whom he admired the more for her love of truth, and lived with happily for many years; but he ever lamented the course of life he had led. He ran a great risk of being hanged, from the curious combination of circ.u.mstances that conspired against him--lost reputation by it, and caused unspeakable grief to one of the best of women. Hence our moral: that one is not always safe from the effects of vice, though he act within the laws.

REUBEN PURVES; or, THE SPECULATOR.

Speculation is the soul of business; it is the mainspring of improvement; it is essential to prosperity. Burns has signified that he could not stoop to crawl into what he considered as the narrow holes of bargain-making; and nine out of every ten persons who consider themselves high-minded profess to sympathise with him, and say he was right. But our immortal bard, in so saying, looked only at the odds and ends--the corners and the disjointed extremities--of bargain-making, properly so called; and he suffered his pride and his prejudices to blind, in this instance, his mighty spirit, and contract his grasp, so that he saw not the all-powerful, the humanising, and civilising influence of the very bargain-making which he despised. True it is, that as a spirit of speculation or bargain-making contracts itself, and every day becomes more and more a thing of farthings and of fractions, it begets a grovelling spirit of meanness, that may eventually end in dishonesty; but as it expands, it exalts the man, imbues his mind with liberality, and benefits society. The spirit of commercial speculation will spread abroad, until it render useless the sword of the hero, cause it to rust in its scabbard, and to be regarded as the barbarous plaything of antiquity. It will go forth as a dove from the ark of society, bearing the olive-branch of peace and of mutual benefits unto all lands, until men shall learn war no more.

But at present I am not writing an essay on speculation or enterprise, but the history of Reuben Purves, the Speculator; and I shall therefore begin with it at once. Reuben was born in Galas.h.i.+els, than which I do not know a more thriving town, or one more beautifully situated, on all the wide Borders. As you pa.s.s it, seated on the outside of the Chevy-Chase coach on a summer day (if perchance a sunny shower shall have fallen), it lies before you as a long and silvered line, the blue slates reflecting back the sunbeams. In its streets, cleanliness and prosperity join hands; while before it and behind it rise hills high enough to be called mountains, where the gorgeous heather purples in its season. Before it--I might say through it--wimples the Gala, almost laving its thresholds. There the spirit of speculation and of trade has taken up "a local habitation and a name," in the bosom of poetry. On the one hand is the magic of Abbotsford, on the other the memories of Melrose. But its description is best summed up in the condemnation of a c.o.c.kney traveller, who said, "Vy, certainly, Galas.h.i.+els would be wery pretty, were it not its vood and vater!"

But I again digress from the history of Reuben Purves. I have said that he was born in Galas.h.i.+els: his father was a weaver, and the father brought his son up to his own profession. But although Reuben

"Was a wabster guid, Could stown a clue wi' onybody,"

his apprentices.h.i.+p (if his instructions from his father could be called one) was scarce expired, when, like Oth.e.l.lo, he found "his occupation gone," and the hand-loom was falling into disuse. Arkwright, who was long considered a mere bee-headed barber, had--though in a great measure by the aid of others--brought his mechanism to a degree of perfection that not only astonished the world, but held out a more inexhaustible and a richer source of wealth to Britain than its mines did to Peru.

Deep and bitter were the imprecations of many against the power-loom; for it is difficult for any man to see good in that which dashes away his hard-earned morsel from the mouths of his family, and leaves them calling in vain for food. But there were a few spirits who could appreciate the vast discovery, and who in it perceived not only the benefits it would confer on the country, but on the human race.

Arkwright, who, though a wonderful man, was not one of deep or accurate knowledge, with a vanity which in him is excusable, imagined that he could carry out the results of his improvements to an extent that would enable the country to pay off the national debt. It was a wild idea; but, extravagant as it was, it must be acknowledged that the fruits of his discoveries enabled Britain to bear up against its burdens, and maintain its faith, in times of severest trial and oppression.

Reuben's father was one of those who complained most bitterly against the modern innovation. He said, "the work could never be like a man's work. It was a ridiculous novelty, and would justly end in the ruin of all engaged in it." It had, indeed, not only reduced his wages the one-half, but he had not half his wonted employment, and he saw nothing but folly, ruin, and injustice in the speculation. Reuben, however, pondered more deeply; he entered somewhat into the spirit of the projector. He not only entertained the belief that it would enrich the nation, but he cherished the hope that it would enrich himself. How it was to accomplish his own advancement he did not exactly perceive, but he lived in the idea--he dreamed of it--nothing could make him divest himself of it; and he was encouraged by his mother saying--

"Weel, Reuben, I canna tell, things may be as ye say--only there is very little appearance o' them at present, when the wages o' you and your faither put thegither are hardly the half o' what ane o' ye could hae made. But ae thing is certain--_they who bode for a silk gown always get a sleeve o't_."

"Nonsense, woman! ye're as bad as him," was the reply of his father; "wherefore would ye encourage the callant in his havers? I wonder, seeing the distress we are a' brought to, he doesna think shame to speak o' such a thing. Mak a fortune by the newfangled system, indeed!--my truly! if it continue meikle langer, he winna be able to get brose without b.u.t.ter."

"Weel, faither," was the answer of Reuben, "we'll see; but you must perceive that there is no great improvement can take place, let it be what it will, without doing injury to somebody. And it is our duty to watch every opportunity to make the most of it."

"In my belief, the laddie is out o' his head," rejoined the father; "but want will bring him to his senses."

Reuben, however, soon found that it became almost impossible to keep soul and body together by the labours of the loom. He therefore began to speculate on what he ought to do; and, like my honoured namesake, the respectable poet, but immortal ornithologist, he took unto himself a PACK, and, with it upon his shoulders, he resolved to perambulate the Borders. There was no disgrace in the calling, for it is as ancient, perhaps more ancient, than n.o.bility; and we are told that, even in the time of Solomon, "there were chapmen in the land in those days."

Therefore Reuben Purves became a chapman. He, as his original trade might lead one to suppose, was purely a dealer in "_soft_" goods; and when he entered a farmhouse, among the bonny buxom girls, he would have flung his pack upon the table, and said--

"Here, now, my braw la.s.sies; look ye here! Here's the real upright, downright, elegant, and irresistible muslin for frills, which no sweetheart upon this earth could have the power to withstand. And here's the gown-pieces--cheap, cheap--actually giein them awa--the newest, the most elegant patterns! Only look at them!--it is a sin to see them so cheap! Naething could be mair handsome! Now or never, la.s.sies. Look at the ribands, too--blue, red, yellow, purple, green, plain, flowered, and gauze. Now is the time for buskin your c.o.c.kernony--naething could withstand them wi' sic faces as yours--naething, naething, and that ye would find. It would be out o' the question to talk o't. Come, hinnies, only observe them, I'm sure ye canna but buy--or look at this lawn."

"O Reuben, man," they would have said, "they are very bonny; but we hae nae siller."

"Havers!" answered he; "young queans like you talking about siller! Sell your hair, dears, and buy lang lawn?"

Then did Reuben pull forth his scissors, and begin to exercise the functions of a hairdresser, in addition to his calling as a chapman--thinning, and sometimes almost cropping, the fair, the raven, the auburn, or the brown tresses of the serving-maids, and giving them his ribands and his cambrics in exchange for their shorn locks. The ringlets he disposed of to the hairdressers in Edinburgh, Newcastle, or Carlisle, and he confessed that he found it a very profitable speculation; and where the colour or texture of the hair was beautiful, he invariably preferred bartering for it, to receiving payment in money.

This was a trait in Reuben's character, at the outset of his career as a speculator, which showed that he had a correct appreciation of the real principles of trade--that he knew the importance of barter, without which commerce could not exist; and it afforded an indication of the future merchant.

He was in the habit of visiting every town, village, and farm-stead within sixty miles of the Borders--to the north and to the south--and taking in the entire breadth of the island. His visits became as regular as clock-work. No merchant now-a-days knows more exactly the day and almost the hour when he may expect a visit from the traveller of the house with which he deals, accompanied with an invitation to drink a bottle of wine, and pay his account, than the people in the Border villages knew when Reuben would appear amongst them.

It was shrewdly suspected that Reuben did not confine himself solely to the sale of ribands, gown-pieces, and such-like ware, but that his goodly pack was in fact a magazine, in which was concealed tea, cognac, and tobacco. At all events, he prospered amazingly, and in the course of three years--though he lessened its weight at every village he came to--his pack overgrew his shoulders, and prosperity compelled him, first, to have recourse to a pack-horse, and, before he had had it long, to a covered cart or caravan. In short, on arriving at a village, instead of going round from house to house, with his stock upon his shoulders, as he was wont to do, he sent round the drummer or bellman: or, where no such functionaries are known, he employed some other individual, with a key and a trencher, to go round the village and make the proclamation--

"This is to give notice, that Mr Reuben Purves, with his grand and elegant a.s.sortment of the newest and most fas.h.i.+onable varieties of soft-ware goods, _and other commodities_, all bought by him for ready money, so that great bargains may be expected, has just arrived (at such an inn), and will remain for this day only; therefore those who wish the real superior articles, at most excellent bargains, will embrace the present opportunity."

Let not the reader despise Reuben because he practised and understood the mysteries of puffing. There is nothing done in this world without it. No gardener ever "lichtlied" his own leeks. All men practise it, from the maker of books to the maker of shoe-blacking, or the vender of matches. From the grandiloquent advertis.e.m.e.nt of a metropolitan auctioneer, down to the "_only_ true and particular account" of an execution, bawled by a flying-stationer on the streets, the spirit of puffing, in its various degrees, is to be found. Therefore we blame not Reuben; he only did what other people did, though perhaps after a different fas.h.i.+on, and with better success. It gave a promise of his success as a tradesman. He said he ventured on it as a speculation, and finding it to suit his purpose, he continued it. In truth, scarce had the herald made the proclamation which I have quoted, until Reuben's cart was literally besieged. His customers said, "it went like a cried fair--there was nae getting forward to it."

Moreover, he was always civil; he was always obliging. He had a smile and a pleasant and merry word for every one. Buy or not buy, his courtesy never failed him. In short, he would do anything to oblige his customers, save to give them credit; and that, as he said, was not because he had any doubt of their honesty, or that he was unwilling to serve them, but because he had laid it down as a rule never to trust a single penny, which rule he could not break. He was also possessed of a goodly person; was some five feet ten inches in height; he had fair hair, a ruddy, cheerful countenance, intelligent blue eyes; and his years but little exceeded thirty.

At this period of Reuben's history, there lived in the town of Moffat one Miss Priscilla Spottiswoode. Now, Priscilla was a portly, and withal a comely, personage, and though rather stout, she was tall in proportion to her stoutness. Nothing could surpa.s.s the smoothness of the clear red and white upon her goodly countenance. There was by no means too much red, and const.i.tutional good-nature shed a sort of perpetual smile over her features, like a sunbeam irradiating a tranquil lake. In short, it was a reproach to every bachelor in the town and parish of Moffat, to have permitted forty-and-four summers to roll over the head of Priscilla, without one amongst them having the manliness to step forward and offer his hand to rescue her from a state of single solitariness.

She had been for more than twenty years the maid, or rather I might say the nurse, of an old and rich lady, who at her death bequeathed to her five hundred pounds.

Reuben first saw Priscilla about three months after she had received the legacy. "Five hundred pounds," thought he, "would set a man on his feet." He also gazed on her kind, comely, smiling countenance, and he said within himself that "the men of Moffat were blind." And eventually he concluded, communing with himself, that the fair Priscilla was a speculation worthy the thinking of. She wished to purchase a few yards of lace for cap-borders, and such-like purposes; and as Reuben sold them to her, he said to her a hundred pleasant things, and he let drop some well-timed and well-turned compliments, and she blushed as his eulogy on the lace aptly ended in praise of her own fair features. Yet this was not all; for he not only sold to her fifty per cent. cheaper than he would have parted with his goods to any other purchaser, but he politely--by what appeared a wilful sort of accident--contrived to give her a full yard into her bargain. Priscilla looked upon Reuben with more than complacency; she acknowledged (that is, to herself) that he was the best-looking, polite, and most sensible young man she had ever seen. She resolved that in future she would deal with no one else; and, indeed, she had got such an excellent bargain of the lace, that she had come to the determination of again visiting his stock, and making a purchase of other articles. And, added she, to a particular friend, "It does a body good to buy from him, for he is always so pleasant."

But Reuben saved her the trouble; for early the next day he called at her house, with a silk dress under his arm. He said--

"It was the last piece of the kind he had--indeed it was a perfect beauty, equal to real India, and would become her exceedingly--and not to think about the price, for that was no object."

"What, then, am I to think about?" thought Priscilla; and she admired the silk much, but, peradventure, if the truth were told, she admired its owner more.

Reuben spent more than two hours beneath the roof of the too-long-neglected spinster. Often in those two hours she blushed, his tongue faltered, and when he rose to depart, he had neither the silk beneath his arm, nor the cash for it in his pocket; but he shook her hand long and fervently, and he would have saluted her fair cheek--but true love, like true genius, people say, is always modest. Priscilla, on being left alone, felt her heart in a very unusual tumult; and now she examined her face in a mirror, and again admired the silk which he had presented to her. She had always heard him spoken of as a steady, thriving, and deserving young man; and it became a settled point in her mind, that, if he directly popped the important question, she would be as candid with him, and at once answer, "_Yes_."

Reuben was frequently seen in Moffat after this, even when he brought no goods for sale; and within six months after her purchase of the lace, the sacred knot, which no man may unloose, was tied between them; and at the age of forty-and-four years and four months, but before time had "wrote a wrinkle" on her fair brow, Miss Priscilla Spottiswoode blushed into Mrs Purves.

While following his avocation as a chapman, Reuben had acc.u.mulated somewhat more than two hundred pounds, which, with the five hundred that his wife brought him, raised his capital to more than seven hundred. But he was not a man to look only at the needle point of things, or whose soul would be lost in a nut-sh.e.l.l. Onward! onward! was the ruling principle of Reuben--he had been fortunate in all his speculations, and he trusted to be fortunate still. Never, during all his wanderings, had he lost sight of the important discoveries of Arkwright, and of the improvements which were every day being made upon them; and, while he was convinced that they would become a source of inexhaustible wealth to the nation, he still cherished the hope and the belief that they would enrich himself. He said also--and Mrs Purves agreed with him--that travelling the country was a most uncomfortable life for a married man.

He therefore sold his horse and his covered cart, disposed of his stock at prime cost, and, with his wife and capital, removed to Manchester.

He took a room and a cellar at the top of Dean Street, and near to the foot of Market Street,

"Where merchants most do congregate."

The upper room served them for bedchamber, parlour, kitchen, and all, while the cellar he converted into a wareroom. Perhaps, having more than seven hundred pounds to begin the world with, some may think that he might have taken more commodious premises; but rents were becoming high in Manchester--many a great merchant has begun business in a cellar--and Reuben, quoting the words of poor Richard, said:--