CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 FROM 
 
 ivi.W. Sampson 
 
Cornell University Library 
 PR 4074.T5 1893 
 
 A Tillyloss scandal 
 
 3 1924 013 211 507 
 
A TILLYLOSS SCANDAL 
 
TILLYLOSS SCANDAL 
 
 y'-- 
 
 /m. barrie 
 
 AUTHOR OF "THE LITTLE MINISTER," " AULD LIGHT IDYLLS," "A WINDOW 
 IN THRUMS," ETC. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 LOVELL, CORYELL & COMPANY 
 
 43, 45 AND 47 EAST TENTH STREET 
 
 c6 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tinis bool< is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013211507 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 A TILLYLOSS SCANDAL. page. 
 
 Chapter I. — In which we approach Haggart hat 
 
 in hand 5 
 
 Chapter II. — Containing the circumstances which 
 
 led to the Departure of Haggart 16 
 
 Chapter III. — Shows how Haggart sat on a dyke 
 
 looking at his own funeral 32 
 
 Chapter IV. — The Wanderings of Haggart 51 
 
 Chapter V. — The Return of Haggart 68 
 
 Chapter VI. — In which a birth is recorded 84 
 
 How Gavin Birse put it to Mag LowHie 101 
 
 LIFE IN A COUNTRY MANSE. 
 
 Chapter I. — Janet 11] 
 
 Chapter II. — Janet's Curiosity 122 
 
 Chapter III. — Teacher M' Queen 132 
 
 Chapter IV.— The Post 142 
 
 Chapter V. — A Wedding in the Smiddy 150 
 
 Dite Deuchars 160 
 
 The Minister's Gown 170 
 
4 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 The Captain or the School 177 
 
 A Powerful Dkug. . -, 185 
 
 EvBKY Man His Own Doctor 195 
 
 Shutting A Map. A Note op Warning 207 
 
 An Invalid in Lodgings 217 
 
 The Mystbbt of Time-tables 227 
 
 Mending the Clock , 235 
 
 The Biggest Box in the World 247 
 
 The Coming Dramatist 259 
 
 It 265 
 
A TILLYLOSS SCANDAL 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 HAND. 
 
 AccoRDiNO to those who have thought the 
 thing over, it would defy the face of clay to 
 set forth this prodigious affair of Tillyloss, the 
 upshot of which was that Tammas Haggart 
 became a humorist. It happened so far back 
 as the Long Year, so called by reason of dis- 
 ease in the potato crop ; and doubtless the 
 house, which stdl stands, derides romance to 
 those who cavil at an outside stair. Further- 
 more, the many who only knew Haggart in his 
 later years, whether personally or through 
 written matter or from Thrums folk who have 
 traveled, will not readily admit that he may 
 once have been an every-day man. There is 
 
G A TILLVLOSS SCANDAL. 
 
 also against me the vexing practice of the 
 farmer of Lookaboutyou, who never passes 
 Tillyloss, if there is a friend of mine within 
 earshot, without saying : 
 
 " Gravestane or no gravestane, Tammas 
 Haggart would have been a humorist." 
 
 Lookaboutyou thus implies that he knew 
 Haggart for a man of parts when the rest of 
 us were blind, and it is tantalizing beyond 
 ordinary to see his word accepted in this mat- 
 ter by people who would not pay him for a drill 
 of potatoes without first stepping it to make 
 sure of the length. 
 
 I have it from Tammas Haggart that until 
 the extraordinary incident occurred which I 
 propose telling as he dropped it into my mouth, 
 he was such a man as myself. True, he was 
 occasionally persuaded by persons of Look- 
 aboutyou' s stamp to gloss over this admission, 
 as incredible on the face of it, but that was in 
 his last years, when he had become something 
 of a show, and was in a puzzle about himself. 
 Of the several reasons he gave me in proof of a 
 non-humorous period in his life the following 
 seem worthy of especial attention : — 
 
 First, that for some years after his marriage 
 
A TILZYLOSS SCANDAL. 7 
 
 he had never thought of himself as more nicely 
 put together than other men. He could not 
 say for certain whether he had ever thought of 
 himself at all, his loom taking up so much of 
 his time. 
 
 Second, that Chirsty was able to aggravate 
 him by saying that if which was which she 
 would have married James Pitbladdo. 
 
 Third, that he was held of little account by 
 the neighbors, who spoke of his living " above 
 Lunan's shoppy," but never localized the shop 
 as " below Haggart's house." 
 
 Fourth, that while on his wanderings he 
 experienced certain novel and singular sensa- 
 tions in his inside, which were probably his 
 humor trying to force a passage. 
 
 Fifth, that in the great scene which ended 
 his wanderings, his humor burst its banks like 
 a dam, and had flowed in burns ever since. 
 
 During nearly forty years we contrived now 
 and again to harness Tammas to his* story, but 
 often he would stop at the difficulty of realiz- 
 ing the man he must have been in his pre- 
 humorous days, and remark, in his sarcastic 
 way, that the one Haggart could not fathom 
 the other. Thus our questionings sometimes 
 
8 A riLLYLOSS SCANDAL. 
 
 ended in silence, when we all looked in trouble 
 at the fire and then went home. As for starting 
 him on the story when he was not in the vein, 
 it was like breasting the brae against a high wind. 
 When the events happened I was only a lad. 
 I cannot send my mind back to the time when 
 I could pass Ha.ggart without the side-glanee 
 nearly all Thrums ofEered to his reputation, 
 and he is best pictured hunkering at Tillyloss, 
 one of a row of his admirers. After eight 
 o'clock it was the pleasant custom of the weav- 
 ers to sit in the open against a house or dyke, 
 their knees near their chins and their ears 
 ready for Haggart. Then his face would be 
 contracted in pain as some strange idea both- 
 ered him and he searched for its humorous 
 aspect. Perhaps ten minutes afterwards his 
 face would expand, he would slap his knees, 
 and we knew that the struggle was over. It 
 was one of his ways, disliked at the time, yet 
 admired on reflection, not to take us into the 
 secret of his laughter ; but he usually ended 
 by looking whimsically in the direction of the 
 burying-ground, when we were perfectly aware 
 of the source of the joke, and those of us 
 nudged each other who were not scared. Un- 
 
A TILLY LOS 8 SCANDAL. 9 
 
 til the spell was broken we might sit thus for 
 the space of a quarter of an hour, none speak- 
 ing, yet in the completest sympathy, because 
 we were all thinking of the same thing, and 
 that a gravestone. 
 
 TUlyloss is three broken rows of houses in 
 the east end of Thrums, with gardens between 
 them, nearly every one of which used to con- 
 tain a pig-sty. There are other ways of getting 
 into the gardens than by windows, for those 
 who are sharp at knowing a gate when it looks 
 like something else. Three or four other 
 houses stand in odd corners, blocking the nar- 
 row road, which dodges through TiUyloss like 
 a hunted animal. Starting from the west end 
 of the suburb, as TiUyloss will be called as soon 
 as we can say the word without smirking, the 
 road climbs straight from the highway to the 
 uppermost row, where it runs against a two- 
 story house. Here we leave it, as many a curi- 
 ous stranger has done, to get out of TiUyloss 
 the best way it can, for that two-storied house 
 is where Tammas Haggart lived, up the out- 
 side stair, the west room. 
 
 Tammas flitted to the Tenements a year 
 after he became a humorist, and it is an ex- 
 
10 A TILLYLOSS SCANDAL. 
 
 traordinary tribute to his memory that the 
 road from the pump up to his old residence in 
 Tillyloss is still called Haggart's Roady. 
 Many persons have inhabited his room since 
 he left it, but though the younger ones hold 
 out for an individuality of their own, the gray- 
 beards still allow that it is Haggart's house. 
 To this day TiUyloss residents asked for a 
 landmark to their dwellings may reply, 
 " I'm sax houses south frae Haggart's," or 
 " Onybody can point out Haggart's stair to 
 you. Ay, weel, gang to that, and then come 
 back three doors." 
 
 The entrance to Lunan's shop was beneath 
 Haggart's stair, which provided a handy retir- 
 ing place in wet weather. Lunan's personality 
 had the enormous advantage of a start of 
 Tammas's, as has been seen, yet Haggart has 
 practically swallowed Lunan, who in his more 
 crabbed age scowled at the sight-seers that 
 came to look at the second story of the house 
 and ignored the shop. As boys we envied, 
 more than learning, the companion whose 
 father kept a shop, and I remember Lunan's son 
 going with his fists for the banker's son who — 
 though he never really believed it — said that 
 
A TILLY LOSS SCANDAL. 11 
 
 his father could have a shop if he liked. Yet 
 the grand romance of Haggart choked the 
 fame of Lunan even with the lads who played 
 dumps at Tillyloss, and the shop came to be 
 localized as " beneath Haggart's stair." Even 
 Lunan's stoutness, which was a landmark in 
 itself, could not save him. The passage be- 
 tween his counter and the wall was so narrow 
 and the rest of his shop so full of goods that 
 before customers could enter Lunan had to 
 come out, but in this quandary his dignity 
 never left him. He always declined to join 
 the company who might be listenmg on the 
 stair to Tammas's adventures, but some say he 
 was not above hearkening through a hole in 
 one of the steps. 
 
 The exact date of Haggart's departure can- 
 not be determined, though it was certainly in 
 the back end of the year 1834. He had then 
 "been married to Chirsty a little short of three 
 years. His age would be something beyond 
 thirty, but he never knew his birthday, and I 
 have heard him say that one of the few things 
 he could not understand was how the relatives 
 of a person deceased could know the precise 
 age to send to the newspapers. 
 
12 A TILLYLOSS SCANDAL. 
 
 What is, however, known for certain is that 
 Tammas's adventures began within a week of 
 the burial of old Mr. Yuill, the parish minister. 
 There had been a to-do about who should 
 preach the funeral sermon, two ministers hav- 
 ing words over it, and all Thrums knowing 
 that Mr. YuiU had left seven pounds to the 
 preacher. At this time Haggart did not belong 
 to the Auld Lichts, nor was he even regular in 
 his attendance at the parish church, but the 
 dispute about the funeral sermon interested him 
 greatly, and when he heard that the session 
 was meeting to decide the affair, he agreed with 
 Chirsty that he might do worse than hang 
 around the door on the chance of getting early 
 information. There was a small crowd at the 
 door on the same errand, all of whom noticed, 
 though they httle thought it would give them 
 a topic to their dying day, that Haggart had on 
 his topcoat. It had been an old one of Mr. 
 YuUl's, presented to Tammas, who could not 
 fill it, but refused to have it altered, out of 
 respect to the minister's memory. It has also 
 been fondly recalled of Tammas that he was 
 only shaven on the one side, as if Chirsty had 
 sent him to the meeting in a hurry, and that 
 
A TILLTLOSS SCANDAL. 13 
 
 he had not the look of a man who was that 
 very night to enter upon experiences which 
 would confound the world. 
 
 " It was an impressive spectacle," Snecky 
 Hohart said subsequently, " to see Tammas 
 discussing the burial sermon, just as keen as 
 me and T'nowhead, and then to think that 
 within twenty-four hours the very ministers 
 themselves would be discussing him." 
 
 " He said to me it had been a dowie day," 
 T'nowhead always remembered. 
 
 " He shoved me when he was crushing 
 in nearer the door," was Hender Robbie's 
 boast. 
 
 " But he took a snuff out of my muU." 
 
 " Maybe he did, but I was the last he spoke 
 to. He said, ' Weel, Dan'l, I'll be stepping 
 back to Tilly.' " 
 
 " Ay, but I passed him at the Tenements, 
 and he says, ' Davit,' he says, and I says, 
 ' Tammas.' " 
 
 " Very like ; but I was carrying a ging of 
 water frae Susie Linn's pump, and Tammas 
 said would I give him a drink, the which I 
 did." 
 
 "Lads, I'm no sure but what I noticed a 
 
14 A TILLTLOSS SCANDAL. 
 
 far-away look in Tammas's face, as if there was 
 something on his mind." 
 
 " If ye did, Jeames, ye kept it to your- 
 sel'." 
 
 " Ay, but I meant to mention it when I got 
 hame." 
 
 " How did ye no, then ? " 
 
 " How does a body no do many a thing ? I 
 dinna say I noticed the look, but just that I'm 
 no sure but what I noticed it." 
 
 So we all did our best to recall Haggart's 
 last words and looks on that amazing evening, 
 even the A.uld Licht minister, who cared little 
 for popularity, claiming as a noticeable thing to 
 have walked behind Tammas and observed that 
 his handkerchief was hanging out of his north 
 pocket. But though all these memories have 
 their value as relics, we have Tammas's own 
 word for it that from the time he reached the 
 session house until his return to Tillyloss he 
 felt much as usual. 
 
 " Ay," he would say in his impressive way, 
 " many a thing may happen between the aucht 
 and the ten-o'clock bells, but I told neither 
 T'nowhead nor Snecky nor none of them as 
 onything was to happen that nicht." 
 
A TILLTL08S SCANDAL. 15 
 
 " Ye did not, Tammas ; na, na, for if ye 
 had I would have heard ye, me being there." 
 
 "Ay, but ye couldna say my reason for no 
 telling ye ? " 
 
 " Na." 
 
 " Weel, then, my reason was just this that 
 I didna ken mysel'." 
 
16 A TILLTLOSS SCANDAL. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 CONTAINING THE CIRCUMSTANCES WHICH LED 
 TO THE DEPARTURE OP HAGGART. 
 
 In the future Haggart's mind was to become 
 a book in which he could turn up any page 
 wanted, but its early stage was a ravel not 
 worth harking back to unless for purposes of 
 comparison. He could never, therefore, when 
 questioned, say for certain that between the 
 session house and Tillyloss he had met a soul 
 except the Auld Licht minister, to see whom 
 was naturally to feel him. At the foot of Tilly, 
 however, he was taken aback to find a carriage 
 and two horses standing. 
 
 The sight knocked all the news he had 
 heard about the funeral sermon out of his head, 
 and left him with just sufficient sense to put 
 his back to the wall and assume the appearance 
 of a man who would begin to think directly. 
 First he gazed at the horses, and said, 
 
A TILLYL08S SCANDAL. 17 
 
 " Ay." 
 
 Then he looked less carefully at the coach- 
 man. 
 
 " Yes," he said. 
 
 Lastly, he gave both eyes to the carriage, 
 and corroborated his previous remarks with, 
 
 " Umpha." 
 
 In themselves these statements suggest little, 
 though they really left Haggart master of the 
 situation. The first was his own answer to the 
 question, " Will these be Babibbie's beasts ? " 
 and the second was merely a stepping-stone to 
 the third, which was a short way of saying that 
 the ladies had called on Chirsty at last. 
 
 Tammas's wife, Chirsty, had been a servant 
 atBalribbie, the mistress of which had promised, 
 as most of Thrums was aware, to call on her 
 some day. 
 
 " Ye'll be none the better though she does 
 call," Haggart used to say, to which Chirsty's 
 inhuman answer was, 
 
 " Maybe no ; but it'll make every other 
 woman in THlyloss miserable." 
 
 Every day for a year Chirsty awaited the 
 coming of the ladies, after which it was the 
 neighbors who spoke of the promised visit 
 
 2 
 
18 A TILLYLOSS SCANDAL. 
 
 rather than herself. But evidently the ladies 
 had come after all, and the question for Tammas 
 was whether to face them or step about TiUy 
 until they had driven away. It is difficult, no 
 doubt, to believe that there ever was a time 
 when Haggart would rather have hidden be- 
 hind a dyke than converse with the gentry, but 
 I have this from himself. He, whose greatest 
 topic in the future was to be. Women, and 
 Why we should Put up with Them, however 
 Unreasonable, could not think of the proper 
 thing to say to the ladies of Balribbie. 
 
 " Losh, losh," he has said, when casting 
 his mind back to this period, " it's hard to me 
 to believe that the unhumorous man switheriug 
 at the foot of Tilly that nicht was reaUy Tammas 
 Haggart, and no just somebody dressed up in 
 Tammas Haggart's image." 
 
 If it was hard to Tammas, how much harder 
 to the like of us. 
 
 Without actually deciding to show tail, 
 Tammas continued to lean heavily against the 
 wall, where he was not conspicuous to two 
 women who passed a httle later with baskets on 
 their arms. 
 
 " I assure ye Chirsty's landed," one of 
 
A TILLYLOSS SCANDAL. 19 
 
 them said, " for she has her grand folk after 
 all." 
 
 " Ay," said the other, " and Tammas is no 
 in, so she'll no need to explain how her man's 
 so lang and thin by what he was when she ex- 
 hibited him at Balribbie." 
 
 " What do ye mean, ye limmers ? " cried 
 Haggart, stepping into sight. " I was never 
 at Balribbie." 
 
 They slipped past him giggling, with the 
 parting shots — 
 
 " Chirsty can tell ye what we mean," and 
 " And so can Jeames Pitbladdo." 
 Haggart probably sent his under lip over the 
 upper one, for that was his way when troubled. 
 He was aware that Chirsty had very nearly 
 married Pitbladdo, but these women meant some- 
 thing else. Without knowing that he was 
 doing so, he marched straight for his house, 
 and was half-way up the outside stair when the 
 door opened, and two ladies, accompanied by 
 Chirsty, came out. Haggart did not even 
 know what they were like, though he was to 
 become such an authority on the female face 
 and figure. He stopped, wanting the courage 
 to go on and the discourtesy to turn back. So 
 he merely stood politely in their way. 
 
20 A TILLTLOSS SCANDAL. 
 
 Chirsty gave her curls an angry shake as she 
 saw him, but he had to be acknowledged. 
 
 " This is himsel'/'' she said, with the con- 
 tempt a woman nat6rally feels for her husband. 
 
 Thus cornered, Tammas opened his mouth 
 wide, to have his photograph taken, as it were, 
 by the two ladies. The elder smiled and said, 
 
 "I am glad to make your acquaintance, 
 James." 
 
 Tammas thinks she said more, but could 
 never swear to it. To keep up with her quick 
 way of speaking was a race for him, and at the 
 word " James " he stumbled, as against a stone. 
 When he came to himself, 
 
 "Thank ye, m«m," he said, "but my 
 name " 
 
 Here Chirsty gave him a look that made him 
 lose his words. 
 
 " Let the leddies pass, can ye no ? " she 
 exclaimed. 
 
 For a moment Tammas did not see how they 
 could pass, unless by returning to the house, 
 when he could follow them and so get rid of 
 himself. Then he had the idea of descending. 
 
 " At the same time," he said, picking up the 
 lost words, " my name " 
 
A TILLYLOSS SCANDAL. 21 
 
 " Dinna argy bargy with the leddies," said 
 Chirsty, tripping down the stair like a lady 
 herself, but not hoisting the color that would 
 at that moment have best become her. 
 
 " You must come out to Bahibbie again and 
 see us, James," the elder lady remarked by 
 way of good-night. 
 
 Tammas turned a face of appeal to his other 
 visitor, who had been regarding him curiously. 
 
 " Do you know, James," she said, " I would 
 not have recognized you again ? " 
 
 " Very like," answered Tammas, " for ye 
 never saw me." 
 
 " Be ashamed of yourself, James," cried 
 Chirsty, shocked to hear husband of hers con- 
 tradict a lady. 
 
 The young lady, however, only smiled. 
 
 " Oh, James," she said, playfully, " to think 
 you have forgotten me, and I poured out 
 your tea that day at Balribbie with my own 
 hand." 
 
 In his after years Tammas, tempted to this 
 extent, would have answered in some gallant 
 words such as the young lady could have taken 
 away with her in the carriage. But that night 
 he was only an ordinary man. 
 
22 A TILLYLOaS SCANDAL. 
 
 " I never set foot in Bal " he was reply- 
 ing, when Chirsty interfered. 
 
 ".Well he minds of it," she said, audaciously, 
 " and no farther back than Monday he says to 
 me, ' That was a cup of tea,' he says, ' as I 
 never tasted the marrows of.' " 
 
 " Wuman ! " cried Tammas. 
 
 " See to the house, James," said Chirsty, 
 "and I'U go as far as the carriage with the 
 ladies." 
 
 When Chirsty returned, five minutes after- 
 wards, her husband was standing where she 
 had left him. 
 
 " My name, mem," he was saying to the 
 stair, "is not James, but Tammas, and it's 
 gospel I tell ye when I say I was never at 
 Balribbie in my born days." 
 
 Chirsty passed him without a word, and went 
 into the house, slamming the door. Tammas 
 and his tantrums did not seriously disturb her, 
 but she had been badly used on her way back 
 from the carriage. While helping the ladies 
 to their seats she had been happily conscious 
 of Kitty Crabb peeping at the proud sight from 
 the back of the doctor's dyke, and as Kitty was 
 the most celebrated gossip in Tillyloss, Chirsty 
 
A TILLTLOSS SCANDAL. 23 
 
 thought to herself, " It'll be through Tilly 
 before bedtime." 
 
 " Ay, Kitty," she said, on her way back, 
 looking over the dyke, " that was the Balrib- 
 bie family calling on me." 
 
 Kitty, however, could never stand Chirsty's 
 airs, and saw an opportunity of humbHng her. 
 
 " I saw nobody," she answered. 
 
 " They've been in my house since half nine," 
 cried Chirsty, anxiously, " and that was their 
 carriage." 
 
 " I saw no carriage," said Kitty, cruelly. 
 
 "I saw ye gaping at it ower the dyke," 
 Chirsty screamed, " and that's it ye hear driv- 
 ing east the road." 
 
 " I hear nothing," said Kitty. 
 
 "Katrine Crabb," cried Chirsty, "think 
 shame of yourself." 
 
 " Na, Chirsty," rejoined Kitty, " ye needna 
 blame me if your grand folk ignore ye." 
 
 So Chirsty entered her house with the dread 
 fear that no one would give her the satisfac- 
 tion of allowing that the Balribbie family had 
 crossed its threshold. She was wringing a 
 duster, as if it were Kitty Crabb, when Tammas 
 stamped up the stair in no mood to offer sym- 
 pathy. 
 
24 A TILLYLOSS SCANDAL. 
 
 He kept his bonnet on, more like a visitor 
 than a man in his own house, but as he 
 plumped upon a stool by the fire he flung his 
 feet against the tongs in a way that showed he 
 required immediate attention. 
 
 " I'm waiting," he said, after a pause. 
 
 " Take your feet ofB the fender," replied 
 Chirsty. 
 
 " Tell me my name immediately," requested 
 Tammas. 
 
 " That's what's troubling ye ? " 
 
 " It is so. What's my name ? " 
 
 " Sal, whatever it is, I wish it wasna mine." 
 
 " Your grand folk called me James." 
 
 "So I noticed." 
 
 " How was that ? " 
 
 " Ye couldna expect the like of them to ken 
 the ins and outs of your name." 
 
 " Nane of your tricks, wuman ; I wasna 
 born on a Sabbath. It was you that said my 
 name was Jeames ; ay, and what's more, ye 
 called me Jeames yoursel'." 
 
 " Do ye think I was to conter grand folk like 
 the Balribbie family ? " 
 
 " Conter here, conter there, I want to bottom 
 this. They said I had been at Balribbie." 
 
A TILLTLOSS SCANDAL. ,25 
 
 " Weel, I think ye micht have been glad to 
 take the credit of that." 
 
 " It's my opinion," said Tammas, " that 
 ye've been pretending I was Jeames Pit- 
 bladdo." 
 
 " Ye micht have been proud of that, too," 
 retorted Chirsty. 
 
 " As sure as death," said Tammas, " if ye 
 dinna clear this up I gang to Balribbie for 
 licht on't." 
 
 " She looked me in the face at that," Tam- 
 mas used to say as he told the story, " and 
 when she saw the michty determination in it 
 she began to sing small. I pointed to the 
 place whaur I wanted her to stand, and I says, 
 ' Now, then, I'm waiting.' " 
 
 " I never pretended to ye," said Chirsty, 
 " but what it was touch and go my no marry- 
 ing Jeames Pitbladdo." 
 
 Tammas nodded. 
 
 " The leddies at Balribbie thocht it was him 
 I was to marry." 
 
 " I daursay." 
 
 " They dinna ken about you at that time." 
 
 " They dinna seem to ken about me yet." 
 
 "Jeames used to come about Balribbie a 
 
26 A TILLTLOSS SCANDAL. 
 
 heap, and they saw he was after me, and Miss 
 Mary often said to me was I fond of him? 
 Ay, and I said he was daft about me. Then 
 he spiered me, and after that they had him up 
 to the house." 
 
 " So, so, and that was the time he got the 
 tea?" 
 
 " It was so, and then I gave up my place, 
 them promising to come and visit me when I 
 was settled." 
 
 " Ay, but Jeames creepit off after aU." 
 
 " Weel ye ken it was his superstitiousness 
 made him give me the go-by." 
 
 " I've heard versions of the story frae folk 
 in the toon, but I didna credit them. Ye took 
 guid care never to tell me about it yoursel'. 
 Ye said to me it was you that wouldna have 
 him, no that he wouldna take you." 
 
 " He wanted me, but he was always a super- 
 stitious man, Jeames Pitbladdo. He was never 
 fonder of me than when we parted." 
 
 " All I ken," said Tammas, " is that he 
 wouldna buy the ring to ye, and that must 
 either have been because he didna want ye 
 when it came to the point, or because he was 
 a michty greedy crittur." 
 
A TILLYLOSS SCANDAL. 27 
 
 '" He's no greedy ; and as for no caring for 
 me, it near broke his heart to give me up. 
 There was tears on his face when we parted." 
 
 " Havers ! what was there to keep him frae 
 buying the ring if he wanted it ? " 
 
 " His superstitiousness." 
 
 " What is there superstitious about a ring ? " 
 
 " It wasna the ring ; it was the hiccup did 
 it." 
 
 " Ay, I heard there was a hiccup in the story, 
 but I didna fash about it." 
 
 " Jeames did though, and it was a very 
 queery thing, I can tell ye, though I didna put 
 the wecht on it that he did. As many a one 
 kens forby me, he walked straight to Peter 
 Lambie's shop to buy the ring, and just as he 
 had his hand on the door he took the hiccup. 
 Ye ken what a superstitious man Jeames is." 
 
 " If I wanted a wife it's no hiccup would 
 stand in the road." 
 
 " Because you're ower ignorant to be super- 
 stitious. And Jeames didna give in at the first 
 try. He was back at the shop the next nicht, 
 and there he took the hiccup again. Then he 
 came to me and said in terrible disappointment 
 as it would be wicked to marry in the face of 
 
28 A TILLTLOSS SCANDAL. 
 
 Providence. I never saw a man so crushed 
 like." 
 
 " Ay, I'm no saying but what this may be 
 true, but it doesna explain your reason for 
 calling me Jeames." 
 
 " I call ye Tammas as a rule, when it's neces- 
 sary to mention your name. Ye canna deny 
 that." 
 
 " Tell me how I'm Jeames to the gentry." 
 
 " I wasna to disgrace mysel' to them, was I ? " 
 
 " Whaur's the disgrace in Tammas ? " 
 
 " Ye maun see, Tammas Haggart, dull as ye 
 are, that it was a trying position for me to be 
 in. When I left Bahibbie the leddies thocht 
 I was to marry Jeames Pitbladdo ; did they 
 no?" 
 
 "I daursay." 
 
 " And I had told them Jeames was complete 
 daft about me ; and so he was, for he called 
 his very porridge spoon after me, a thing you 
 never did." 
 
 " Did I ever pretend to you I had these 
 poetical ways ? " 
 
 " I wouldua have believed it, though you 
 did. But was ever mortal woman left in sich 
 a predicament because of a superstition? 
 
A TILLYLOSS SCANDAL. 29 
 
 Nat'rally, when I married you, I didna' let on 
 to the Bah'ibbie family as ye wasna' Jeames 
 Pitbladdo, and Jeames Pitbladdo they think 
 ye to this day. What harm does it do 
 ye?" 
 
 " Harm ! It leaves me complete mixed up 
 about mysel'. Chirsty Todd, ye have disgraced 
 me this nicht." 
 
 Here Chirsty turned on him. 
 
 "I've disgraced ye, have I ? And wha has 
 shamed me every nicht for years, if no' yersel', 
 Tammas Hasrarart ? " 
 
 " In what way have I shamed ye ? " 
 
 " In many a way, and particularly with what 
 ye say at family worship. Take your feet off 
 that fender." 
 
 " I keep my feet on the fender till I hear 
 what new blether this is ; ay, and longer if I 
 like." 
 
 " The things ye say in the prayer is an in- 
 sult." 
 
 " Canny, Chirsty> Todd. That prayer, as 
 weel ye ken, wa"^ ^-arned out of a book, the 
 which was lended to me for the purpose by a 
 flying stationer." 
 
 " Ye're a puir crittur if ye canna' make up 
 
30 A TILLY LOSS SCANDAL. 
 
 ■what to say yersel'. Do you think you'll ever 
 he an elder ? Not you." 
 
 " Wha wants to be an elder ? " 
 
 " None of your hlasphemy, Tammas Hag- 
 gart." 
 
 " What's wrang with the prayer ? " 
 
 " Gang through it in your head, and you'll 
 soon see that." 
 
 Tammas repeated the prayer aloud, but with- 
 out enlightenment; whereupon Chirsty nearly 
 went the length of shaking him. 
 
 " Did ye not pray this minute," she said, 
 " ' for the heads of this house, and also the 
 children thereof ? ' " 
 
 "I did so." 
 
 "And have ye no' repeated these words 
 every nicht for near three years ? " 
 
 " And what about that ?" 
 
 " Tammas Haggart, have we any bairns ? Is 
 there ' children thereof ? ' " 
 
 Tammas used to say that at this point he 
 took his feet off the fender. When he spoke 
 it was thus — 
 
 " As sure as death, Chirsty, I never thocht 
 of that." 
 
 His intention was to soothe the woman, but 
 
A TILLYLOSS SCANDAL. 31 
 
 the utter unreasonableness of the sex, as he has 
 pomted out, was finely illustrated by the way 
 Chirsty took his explanation. 
 
 " Ye never thocht of it ! " she exclaimed, 
 " Tammas, you're a most aggravating man." 
 
 In his humorous period, Haggart could have 
 stood even this, but that night it was beyond 
 bearing. He jumped to his feet and stumbled 
 to the door. 
 
 " Chirsty Todd," he turned to say, slowly 
 and emphatically, "you're a vain tid. But 
 beware, woman, there's others than Jeames 
 Pitbladdo as can take the hiccup." 
 
 Chirsty had strange cause to remember this 
 prophecy, but at the moment it only sent her 
 running to the door. Tammas was half-way 
 down Tillyloss already, but she caught him 
 in the back with this stone : 
 
 " Guid-nicht, Jeames ! " 
 
 With these words the Thrums Odyssey began. 
 
32 A TILLYLOSS SCANDAL. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 SHOWS HOW HAGGART SAT OS A DYKE LOOKING 
 AT HIS OWN FUNERAL. 
 
 Haggaet must have left Tillyloss with 
 Chirsty heavy on his mind, for an hour after- 
 wards he was surprised to find himself out of 
 Thrums. He was wandering beneath trees 
 alongside the Whunny drain, which is said to 
 have been chiseled from the rocks when men's 
 wages were fourpence a day. Here he sat 
 down, preparatory to turning back. It was 
 now past his usual bedtime, and he had been 
 twelve hours at work that day. 
 
 " I canna say whether I sat lang thinking 
 about Chirsty," he afterwards admitted ; " but 
 I mind watching a water-rat running out and 
 in among some nettles till it got mixed in my 
 mind with the shuttle of my loom, and by that 
 time I was likely sleeping." 
 
 The probability is that Tammas, who met no 
 one, walked west from Tillyloss to Susie Linn's 
 
A TILLYLOSS SCANDAL. 33 
 
 pump, where he took the back wynd and made 
 for the drain edge by the west town end. This 
 is the route we have usually given him — ^though 
 Lookaboutyou sends him round by the den — 
 and I have walked it often with Tammas when 
 we were drawing up a sort of map of his wander- 
 ings. The last time I did this was in the com- 
 pany of William Byars, who came back to 
 Thrums recently after nearly thirty years' ab- 
 sence, and spoke of Haggart the moment his 
 eyes lighted again on Tillyloss. Those that 
 saw him say that William was overcome with 
 emotion when he gazed at the memorable out- 
 side stair, and at last walked away softly say- 
 ing, " Haggart was a man." What I can say 
 of my own knowledge is that William met me 
 one day as I was coming into Thrums from 
 my school-house and asked me as a favor to go 
 round the " Haggart places " with him. . This 
 I mention as showing what a hold the afEair we 
 are now tracking took upon the popular mind. 
 I pointed out to William the very spot on 
 which Tammas fell asleep. The drain edge 
 path crossed the burn at that time by a foot- 
 bridge of stone, and cKmbed a paling into the 
 Long Parks of AuchtersmeUie. A hoarding 
 
34 A TILLYLOSS SCANDAL. 
 
 has been erected on this bridge to make travel- 
 ers go another way, but it is also as good as a 
 sign-post, for ten yards due south from it stands 
 the short thick beech against which Tammas 
 Haggart undoubtedly slept for nearly seven 
 hours on that queer night. Even Lookabout- 
 you admits this. 
 
 To make the scene as vivid as possible, Wil- 
 liam, at my suggestion, sat down beneath the 
 tree like one sleeping. I then went a little 
 way into the Long Parks and came back 
 hurriedly, making pretense that it was a dark 
 night. I climbed the paHng, crossed the 
 bridge — there being two loose spars in the 
 hoarding — and was passing on when suddenly 
 I saw a man sleeping at the foot of a tree. 
 When regarding him I shivered, as if it was 
 the depth of winter, and then noted that he 
 had on a thick top-coat. After a little hesita- 
 tion, I raised him cautiously and got the coat off 
 without wakening him. I was rushing off with 
 it when I remembered that the night was cold 
 for him as well as for me, and flung my old 
 coat down beside him. Then I hurried off, but 
 of course come back directly, the make-believe 
 being over. 
 
A TILL r LOSS SCANDAL. 35 
 
 Something very like this happened while 
 Haggart was asleep, though no human eye wit- 
 nessed the scene. All we are sure of is that 
 the thief was dressed in corduroys like Tammas's, 
 and that the coat he left behind him was a thin 
 linen one, coarse, stained — though not torn — 
 and apparently worthless. There were twelve 
 buttons on it — an unusual number, but not, as 
 Tammas discovered, too many. It is a matter 
 for regret that this coat was not preserved. 
 
 No doubt Tammas was shivering when he 
 woke up, but all his minor troubles were swal- 
 lowed in the loss of his top-coat, which was not 
 only a fine one, but contained every penny he 
 had in the world, namely, seven shillings and 
 sixpence in a linen bag. He climbed into the 
 Long Parks looking for the thief ; he ran along 
 the drain edge looking for him, and finally he 
 sat down in dull despair. It was a cruel loss, 
 and now not his indignation with Chirsty, but 
 Chirsty's case against him, shook his frame. 
 
 " The first use I ever made of the linen coat," 
 he allowed, " was to wipe the water ofE my een 
 wi t. 
 
 Only fear of Chirsty can explain Haggart's 
 next step, which was, after putting on the linen 
 
36 A TILLYLOSS SCANDAL. 
 
 coat, to wander off by the Long Parks, instead, 
 of at once returning to Tillyloss. 
 
 I did not take William over the ground cov- 
 ered by Haggart during the next three days ; 
 indeed, the great part of it is only known 
 to me by vague report. Tammas doubtless had 
 no notion when he ran away, as one might call 
 it, from Chirsty, that he would sleep next night 
 thirty miles from Thrums. At the back of the 
 house of Auchtersmellie, however, he fell in 
 with a wandering tailor, bound for a glen farm, 
 where six weeks' work awaited him. He was 
 not a man of these parts, but Tammas offered 
 to walk a few miles with him, and ended by 
 going the whole way. Of Haggart's experi- 
 ences at this time I know much, but none of 
 them is visible beside the surprising event that 
 sent him homewards striding. 
 
 It takes one aback to think that Haggart 
 might never have been a humorist had not one 
 of the buttons fallen off his coat. The im- 
 mediate effect of this was dramatic rather than 
 humorous. The tailor picked up the button to 
 sew it on to the coat again, but surprised by its 
 weight had the curiosity to tear its linen cover- 
 ing with his scissors. Then he drew in his 
 
A TILLYLOSS SCANDAL. 37 
 
 breath, extending his eyes and looking so like 
 a man who would presently whistle with sur- 
 prise that Haggart stooped forward to regard 
 the button closely. Next moment he had 
 snatched up the button with one hand and the 
 coat with another, and was off like a racer to 
 the tinkle of the starter's bell. 
 
 When beyond pursuit, Haggart sat down to 
 make certain that he was really a rich man. 
 The button that had fallen off was a guinea — 
 gold guineas we said in Thrums, out of respect 
 for them — covered with cloth, and a brief ex- 
 amination showed that the eleven other buttons 
 were of the same costly kind. One popular 
 explanation of this mysterious affair is that the 
 tramp who left this coat to Tammas had stolen 
 it from some person unknown, without realiz- 
 ing its value. Who the owner was has never 
 been discovered, but he was doubtless a miser, 
 who liked to carry his hoard about with him 
 unostentatiously. I have known of larger suras 
 hidden by farmers in as unlikely places. 
 
 Before resuming his triumphal march home, 
 Tammas pricked a hole in each of the buttons, 
 to make sure of his fortune, and wasted some 
 time in deciding that it would be safer to carry 
 
B8 A riLLYLOSS SCANDAL. 
 
 the guineas as they were than stowed away in 
 his boots. 
 
 " Sometimes on the road home," he used to 
 say, " I ran my head on a tree or splashed into 
 a bog, for it's sair work to keep your een on 
 twelve buttons when they're all in different 
 places. Lads, I watched them as if they were 
 living things." 
 
 WilHam and I crossed from the drain edge 
 to the hill, where the next scene in the drama 
 was played. The hill is public ground to the 
 north of Thrums, separated from it by the 
 cemetery and a few fields. So steep is the 
 descent that a heavy stone pushed from the 
 south side of the hUl-dyke might crash two 
 minutes afterwards against the back walls of 
 Tillyloss. The view from the hill is among 
 the most extensive in Scotland, and it also 
 exposes some dilapidated courts in Thrums 
 that are difficult to find when you are within 
 a few feet of them. Fifty years ago the hill 
 was nearly covered with whins, and it is half 
 hidden in them still, despite the life-work of 
 D. Fittis. 
 
 For some reason that I probably never knew, 
 w§ always called him D. Fittis, but tradition 
 
A TILLYLOSS SCANDAL. 39 
 
 remembers him as the Whinslayer. At a time 
 when neither William nor I was of an age to 
 play smuggle, D. Fittis's wife lay dying far up 
 Glen Quharity. Her head was on D. Fittis's 
 breast, and the tears on her cheeks came from 
 his eyes. There were no human beings within 
 an hour's trudge of them, and what made D. 
 Fittis gulp was that he must leave Betsy alone 
 while he ran through the long night for the 
 Thrums doctor, or sit with her tiU she 
 died. 
 
 " Ye'U no leave me, Davie," she said. 
 
 " Oh, Betsy ; if I had the doctor, ye micht 
 Uve." 
 
 Betsy did not think she could live, but she 
 knew her man writhed in his helplessness, and 
 she told him to go. 
 
 " Put on your cravat, Davie," she said, " and 
 mind and button up your coat." 
 
 . " Oh, but I'm loth to gang frae ye," he said 
 when his cravat was round his neck and he 
 stood holding Betsy's hand. 
 
 " God's with me, Davie, and with you," 
 Betsy said, but she could not help clinging to 
 him, and then D. Fittis cried, " Oh, blessed God, 
 Thou who didst in Thy great wisdom make 
 
40 A TILLYLOSS SCANDAL. 
 
 poor folk like me, in Thy hands I leave this 
 woman, and oh, ye micht spare her to me." 
 
 " Ay, but God's will be done," said Betsy. 
 « He kens best." 
 
 It was not God's will that these two should 
 meet again on this earth. At the school-house, 
 which was to become my home, D. Pittis found 
 friends who hastened to his wife's side, and 
 Craigiebuckle lent him a horse on which he 
 galloped off to Thrums. But among the whins 
 of the hm the horse flung him and broke his 
 lesr. D. Fittis tried to crawl the rest of the 
 way, but he was found next morning in a wild 
 state among the whins, and he was never a 
 sane man again. For the remainder of his 
 Ufe he had but one passion — to cut down the 
 whins, and many a time, at early morn, at 
 noon, and when gloaming was coming on, I 
 have seen him busy among them with his 
 scythe. They grew as fast as he could cut, 
 but he had loving relatives to tend him, and 
 was still a kindly harmless man, though his 
 laugh was empty. 
 
 William and I waded through the whins to 
 a hollow in the hill, known as the toad's hole. 
 It was here that Haggart, returning boldly to 
 
A riLLYLOSS SCANDAL. 41 
 
 Thrums four days after Chirsty had the last 
 word, fell in with D. Fittis. 
 
 " He was cutting away at the whins," Tam- 
 mas remembered, " and I dinna think that the 
 whole time me and him spoke he ever raised 
 his head ; he was a terrible busy man, D. 
 Fittis." 
 
 Haggart, big with his buttons, had, doubt- 
 less, as he approached the whinslayer, the bosom 
 of a victorious soldier marching home to music. 
 Nevertheless it has been noticed that the war- 
 rior, who thrives on battles, may, even in the 
 hour of his greatest glory, be forever laid prone 
 by a chimney can. For Tammas Haggart, 
 confident that a few minutes would see him in 
 Tillyloss, was preparing a surprise that rooted 
 him to the toad's-hole like a whin. I have a 
 poor memory if I cannot remember Haggart's 
 own words on this matter. 
 
 "I stood looking at D. Fittis for awhile," he 
 told me, " but I said nothing loud out, though 
 the chances are I was pitying the stocky in my 
 mind. Then I says to him in an ordinary voice, 
 not expecting a dumfounding answer, I says, 
 ' Ay, D. Fittis, and is there onything fresh in 
 Thrums?' 
 
42 A riLLTLOSS SCANDAL. 
 
 " He hacks away at the whins, but says he, 
 * The bural's this day.' 
 
 " ' Man/ I says, ' so there's a funeral ! 
 Wha'sdead?' 
 
 " ' Ye ken fine,' says he, implying as the 
 thing was notorious. 
 
 " ' Na,' I says, ' I dinna ken. Wha is it ? ' 
 
 " ' Weel,' says he, ' it's Tammas Haggart.' " 
 
 Tammas always warned us here against 
 attempting to realize his feehngs at these mon- 
 strous words. " I dinna say I can picture my 
 position now mysel'," he said, " but one thing 
 sure is that for the moment these buttons 
 slipped clean out of my head. It was an eerie- 
 like thing to see D. Fittis cutting away at the 
 whins after making such an announcement. A 
 common death couldna have affected him 
 less." 
 
 " ' Say wha's dead again, D. Fittis,' I cries, 
 minding that the body was daft. 
 
 " ' Tammas Haggart,' says he, with the ut- 
 most confidence. 
 
 " ' Man, D. Fittis,' I says, with uncontrolled 
 indignation, ' ye're a big liar.' 
 
 " ' Whaever ye are,' says he, ' I would Hck 
 ye for saying that if I could spare the time.' 
 
A TILLYLOSS SCANDAL. 43 
 
 " ' Whaever I am ! ' I cries. ' Very weel ye 
 ken I'm Tammas Haggart.' 
 
 " ' Wha's the liar now? ' says he. 
 
 " I was a sort of staggered at this, and I says 
 sharp-like, ' What did Tammas Haggart die of ? ' 
 
 " I thocht that would puzzle him, if it was 
 just his daftness that made him say I was gone, 
 but he had his cause of death ready. ' He fell 
 down the quarry,' says he. 
 
 "Weel, lads, his confidence about the thing 
 sickened me, and I says, ' Leave these whins 
 alone, D. Pittis, and teU me all about it. ' 
 
 " ' I canna stop my work,' he says, ' but Tam- 
 mas Haggart fell down the 'quarry four nichts 
 since. Ou, it was in the middle of the nicht, 
 and all Thrums were sleeping when it was 
 wakened by one awful scream. It wakened the 
 whole town. Ay, a heap of folk set up sudden 
 in their beds.' 
 
 " ' And was that Tammas Haggart falling 
 down the quarry ? ' I says, earnest-like, for I 
 was a kind of awestruck. 
 
 " ' It was so,' says he, tearing away in the 
 whins. 
 
 " ' They didna find the body, though,' I says, 
 looking down on mysel' with satisfaction. 
 
44 A riLLTLOSS SCANDAL. 
 
 " ' Ay,' says he, ' the masons found it the 
 next morning, and there was a richt rush of 
 folk to see it.' 
 
 " ' Ye had been there ? ' I says. 
 
 " ' I "was,' says he, ' and so was the wifie as 
 lives beneath me. She took her bairn too, for 
 she said, " It'll be something for the little ane 
 to boast about having seen when he grows 
 bigger." Ay, man, it had been a michty fall, 
 and the face wasna recognizable.' 
 
 " ' How did they ken, then,' says I, ' that it 
 was Tammas Haggart ? ' 
 
 " ' Ou,' says he at once, ' they kent him by 
 his top-coat.' 
 
 " Lads, of course I saw in a klink that the 
 man as stole my top-coat had fallen down the 
 quarry and been mista'en for me. Weel, I 
 nipped mysel' at that. It's an unco thing to 
 say, but I admit I was glad to have this proof, 
 as ye may call it, that it was really me as was 
 standing in the toad's hole. 
 
 "' When did ye say the buralwas ? ' I asked 
 him. 
 
 " ' It's at half three this day,' he says, ' and 
 I'll warrant it's half three now, so if ye want 
 to be sure ye're no Tammas Haggart ye can 
 see him buried.' 
 
A TILLYLOSS SCANDAL. 45 
 
 " I took a long look at D. Fittis, and. it's 
 gospel I tell ye when I say I never Uked him 
 from that minute. Then I hurried up the hiU 
 to the cemetery dyke, and sat down on it. 
 Lads, I sat there, just at the very corner, whaur 
 they've since put a cross to mark the spot, and 
 I watched my ain bural. Yes, there I sat for 
 near an hour, me, Tammas Haggart, an ordi- 
 nary man at that time, getting sich an experi- 
 ence as has been denied to the most highly edi- 
 cated in the land. I'm no boasting, but facts 
 is facts. 
 
 " I'm no saying it wasna a fearsome sight, 
 for I had a terrible sinking at the heart, and a 
 mortal terror took grip of me, so that I couldna 
 have got off that dyke except by falling. Ay, 
 and when the grave was filled up and the 
 mourners had dribbled away, I sat on with some 
 uncommon thochts in my mind. It would be 
 wearing on to four o'clock when I got up 
 shivering, and walked back to whaur D. Fittis 
 was working. There was a question I wanted 
 to put to him. 
 
 " ' D. Fittis,' I says, ' was there ony of the 
 Balribbie folk as visited Taartnas Haggart's 
 wife in her affliction ? ' 
 
46 A TILLY LOSS SCANDAL. 
 
 " ' Ay,' says the crittur, trying to break a 
 supple whin with his foot, ' the wifie as lives 
 beneath me was in the house at TiUyloss when 
 in walks a grand leddy.' 
 
 " ' So, so,' I says, ' and was Chirsty ta'en up 
 like about her man being dead ? ' 
 
 " ' Ay,' says D. Fittis, ' she was greeting, but 
 as soon as the grand woman comes in, Chirsty 
 takes the wifie as lives beneath me into a cor- 
 ner and whispers to her.' 
 
 " ' D. Fittis,' I says, sternly, ' tell me what 
 Chirsty Todd whispered, for muckle depends 
 on it.' 
 
 " Weel,' he says, ' she whispered, " If the 
 leddy calls the corpse 'Jeames' dinna conter- 
 dict her." ' 
 
 " I denounced Chirsty in my heart at that, 
 not being sufficient of a humorist to make 
 allowance for women, and I says, just to see if 
 the thing was commonly kent, I says, 
 
 " ' And wha would Jeames be ? ' 
 
 "'I dinna ken,' says D. Fittis, 'but maybe 
 you're Jeames yersel', when ye canna be 
 Tammas Haggart.' 
 
 " Lads, ye see now that it was D. Fittis as 
 put it into my head to do what I subsequently 
 
A TILLYLOSS SCANDAL. 4.7 
 
 did. ' Jeames,' I said, * I'll be frae this hour,' 
 and without another word I walked off in the 
 opposite direction frae Thrums. 
 
 " I dinna pretend as it was Chirsty's behav- 
 ior alone that sent me wandering through the 
 land. I had a dread of that funeral for one 
 thing, and for another I had twelve gold 
 guineas about me. Moreover, the ambition to 
 travel took hold of me, and I thocht Chirsty's 
 worst trials was <5ver at ony rate, and that she 
 was used to my being dead now." 
 
 " But the well-wisher, Tammas ? " we would 
 say atthis^tage. 
 
 " Ay, I'm coming to that. I walked at a 
 michty stride alang the hill and round by the 
 road at the back of the three-cornered wood to 
 near as far as the farm of Glassal, and there I sat 
 down at the roadside. I was beginning to be 
 mair anxious about Chirsty now, and to thi^ik 
 I was fell fond of her for all her exasperating 
 ways. I was torn with conflicting emotions, of 
 which the one said, ' Back ye go to Tillyloss,' 
 but the other says, ' Ye'U never have a chance 
 like this again.' Weel, I could not persuade 
 mysel', though I did my best, to gang back to 
 my loom and hand ower the siller to Chirsty, 
 
48 A TILLYLOSS SCANDAL. 
 
 and so, as ye all ken, I compromised. I hur- 
 ried back to the hill " 
 
 " But ye've forgotten the cheese ? " 
 
 " Na, listen : I hurried back to the hill, 
 wondering how I could send a guinea to 
 Chirsty, and I minded that I had about half a 
 pound of cheese in my pouch, the which I had 
 got at a farm in Glen Quharity. Weel, I 
 shoved a guinea into the cheese, and back I 
 goes to the hill to D. Fittis. 
 
 " ' D. Fittis,' I says, ' I ken you're an honest 
 man, and I want ye to take this bit of cheese 
 to Chirsty Todd.' 
 
 " ' Ay,' he says, ' I'll take it, but no till it's 
 ower dark for me to see the whins.' 
 
 "What a busy crittur D. Fittis was, and to 
 no end ! I left the cheese with him, and was 
 off again, when he cries me back. 
 
 " ' Wha will I say sent the cheese ? ' he asks. 
 I considered a minute, and then I says, ' Tell 
 her,' I says, ' that it is frae a well-wisher.' 
 
 " These were my last words to D. Fittis, for 
 I was feared other folk micht see me, and 
 away I ran. Yes, lads, I covered twenty miles 
 that day, never stopping till I got to Dundee." 
 
 It was Haggart's way, when he told his 
 
A TILLY LOS 8 SCANDAL. 49 
 
 story, to pause now and again for comments, 
 and this was a point where we all wagged our 
 heads, the question being whether his assump- 
 tion of the character of a well-wisher was not 
 a clear proof of humor. "That there was 
 humor in it," Haggart would say, when sum- 
 ming up, " I can now see, but compared to 
 what was to follow, it was neither here nor 
 there. My humor at that time was like a lad- 
 die trying to open a stiff gate, and even when 
 it did squeeze past, the gate closed again with 
 a snap. Ay, lads, just listen, and ye'U hear 
 how it came about as the gate opened wide, 
 never to close again," 
 
 " Ye had the stuff in ye, though," Look- 
 aboutyou would say, " and therefore, I'm of 
 opinion that ye've been a humorist frae the 
 cradle." 
 
 "Little you ken about it," Haggart would 
 answer. "No doubt I had the material of 
 humor in me, but it was raw. I'm thinking 
 cold water and kail and carrots and a penny 
 bone are the materials broth is made of ? " 
 
 " They are, they are." 
 
 "Ay, but it's no broth till it boils?" 
 
 " So it's no. Ye're richt, Tammas." 
 
50 A TILLYLOSS SCANDAL. 
 
 " Weel, then, it's the same with humor. 
 Considering me as a humorist, ye micht say 
 that when my travels began I had put mysel' 
 on the fire to boil." 
 
A TILLYLOSS SCANDAL. 61 
 
 CHAPTEK IV. 
 
 THE WANDERINGS OF HAGGART. 
 
 Not having a Haggart head on my shoulders 
 I dare not attempt to follow the explorer step 
 by step during his wanderings of the next five 
 months. In that time he journeyed through 
 at least one country, unconsciously absorbing 
 everything that his conjurer's wand could turn 
 to humor when the knack came to him. This 
 admission he has himself signed in conversa- 
 tion. 
 
 " Ay," he said, " I was Hke a blind beggar 
 in these days, and the dog that led me by a 
 string was my impulses." 
 
 Most of us let this pass, with the reflection 
 that Haggart could not have said it in his pre- 
 humorous days, but Snecky Hobart put in his 
 word. 
 
 " Ye were hardly like the blind beggar," 
 
52 A TILLYLOSS SCANDAL. 
 
 he said, " for ye didna carry a tanker for folk 
 to put bawbees in." 
 
 Snecky explained afterwards that he only 
 spoke to give Haggart an opportunity. It 
 was, indeed, the way of all of us, when we 
 saw an opening, to coax Tammas into it. So 
 sportsmen of another kind can point out the 
 hare to their dogs, and confidently await 
 results. 
 
 " Ye're wrang, Snecky," replied Haggart. 
 
 As ever, before shooting his bolt, he then 
 paused. His mouth was open, and he had 
 the appearance of a man hearkening intensely 
 for some communication from below. There 
 were those who went the length of hinting 
 that on these occasions something inside 
 jumped to his mouth and told him what to 
 say. 
 
 " Yes, Snecky," he said at last, " ye're 
 wrang. My mouth was the tanker, and the 
 folk I met had aU to pay toll, as ye may say, 
 for they dropped things into my mouth that 
 my humor turns to as muckle account as 
 though they were bawbees. I'm no sure " 
 
 " There's no many things ye're no sure of, 
 Tammas." 
 
A TILLYLOSS SCANDAL. 53 
 
 " And this is no one of them. It's just a 
 form of expression, and if ye interrupt me 
 again, Snecky Hobai-t, I'll say a sarcastic 
 thing about you that instant. What I was to 
 say was that I'm no sure but what a humorist 
 swallows everybody whole that he falls in 
 with." 
 
 The impossibility of telhng everything that 
 befell Haggart in his wanderings is best proved 
 in his own words : 
 
 " My adventures," he said, " was so surpris- 
 ing thick that when I cast them over in my 
 mind I'm like a man in a corn-field, and every 
 stalk of corn an adventure. Lads, it's useless 
 to expect me to give you the history of ilka 
 stalk. I wrax out my left hand, and I gi-ip 
 something, namely, an adventure ; or I wrax 
 out my right hand and grip something, namely, 
 another adventure. Well, by keeping straight 
 on in ony direction we wade through advent- 
 ures till we get out of the field, that is to say, 
 tin we land back at Thrums. Ye say my ad- 
 ventures sounds different on different nichts. 
 Precisely, for it all depends on which direction 
 I splash off in." 
 
 Without going the length of saying that 
 
54 A TILLYLOSS SCANDAL. 
 
 Haggart splashed more than was necessary, I 
 may perhaps express regret that he never saw 
 his way to clearing up certain disputed pas- 
 sages in his wanderings. I would, I know, be 
 iU-thought of among the friends who survive 
 him if I stated for a fact that he never reached 
 London. There was a general wish that he 
 should have taken London in his travels, and 
 if Haggart had a weakness it was his reluc- 
 tance to disappoint an audience. I must own 
 that he trod down his corn-field pretty thor- 
 oughly before his hand touched the corn-stalk 
 called London, and that his London reminis- 
 cences never seemed to me to have quite the 
 air of reahty that filled his recollections of 
 Edinburgh. Admitted that he confirmed glibly 
 as an eye-witness the report that London 
 houses have no gardens (except at the back), 
 it remains undoubted that Craigiebuckle con- 
 fused him with the question : — 
 
 " What do they charge in London for half- 
 a-pound of boiling beef and a penny bone ? " 
 
 Haggart answered, but after a pause, as if 
 he had forgotten the price, which scarcely 
 seems natural. However, I do not say that 
 he was never in London, and certainly his 
 
A TILLYLOSS SCANDAL. 55 
 
 curious adventures in it are still retailed, 
 especially one with an ignorant policeman who 
 could not teU him which was the road to 
 Thrums, and another with the doorkeeper of 
 the House of Parliament, who, on being asked 
 by Haggart " How much was to pay ? " fool- 
 ishly answered " What you please." 
 
 But though I heartily approve the feeling 
 in Thrums against those carping critics who 
 would slice bits " off the statue which we may 
 be said to have reared to Haggart's memory, 
 some of the stories now fondly cherished are 
 undoubtedly mythical. For instance, what- 
 ever Lookabojityou may say, I do not believe 
 that Haggart once flung a clod of earth at 
 the Pope. It is perfectly true that some such 
 story got abroad, but if countenanced by Hag- 
 gart it was only because Chirsty had her own 
 reasons for wanting him to stand well with 
 the Auld Lieht minister. Often Haggart was 
 said in his own presence to have had advent- 
 ures in such places as were suddenly discovered 
 by us in the newspapers, places that had ac- 
 quired a public interest, say, because of a mur- 
 der ; and then he neither agreed that he had 
 been there nor allowed that he had not. Thus 
 
56 A TILLYLOSS SCANDAL. 
 
 it is reasonable to believe that his less discrim- 
 inating admirers splashed out of Haggart's 
 corn-field into some other body's without notic- 
 ing that they had crossed the dyke. His silence 
 at those times is a little aggravating to his 
 chronicler now, but I would be the first to 
 defend it against detractors. Unquestionably 
 the length of time during which Haggart 
 would put his under Up over the upper one, 
 and so shut the door on words, was one of the 
 grandest proofs of his humor. However 
 plentiful the water in the dam may be, there 
 are occasions when it is handy to let down the 
 sluice. 
 
 I the more readily grant that certain of the 
 Haggart stories may have been plucked from 
 the wrong fields, because there still remain a 
 sufficient number of authenticated ones to fill 
 the mind with rapture. A statistician could 
 tell how far they would reach round the world, 
 supposing they were represented by a brick 
 apiece, or how long they would take to pass 
 through a doorway on each other's heels. We 
 never attempted to count them. Being only 
 average men we could not conveniently carry 
 beyond a certain number of the stories about 
 
A TILLYLOSS SCANDAL. 57 
 
 with US, and thus many would doubtless now 
 be lost were it not that some of us loaded 
 ourselves with one lot and others with another. 
 Each had his favorites, and Haggart sup- 
 phed us with the article we wanted, just as 
 if he and we were on opposite sides of a 
 counter. Thus when we discuss him now we 
 may have new things to tell of him ; nay, 
 even the descendants of his friends are worth 
 listening to on Haggart, for the stories have 
 been passed on from father to son. 
 
 Some enjoyed most his reminiscences of how 
 he felt each time he had to cut off another 
 button. 
 
 "Lads," he said, "I wasna unlike a doctor. 
 Ye mind Doctor Skene saying as how the 
 young doctors at the college grew faint like at 
 first when they saw blood gushing, but by 
 and by they became so michty hardy that they 
 could off with a leg as cool as though they 
 were just hacking sticks ? " 
 
 " Ay, he said that." 
 
 " Weel, that was my sensations. "When I 
 cut off the first button it was like sticking the 
 knife into mysel', and I did it in the dark be- 
 cause I hadna the heart to look on. Ay, the 
 
58 A TILLTLOSS SCANDAL. 
 
 next button was a stiff job too, but after that 
 I grew what ye may call hard-hearted, and it's 
 scarce going beyond the truth to say that a 
 time came when I had a positive pleasure in 
 sending the siller flying. I dinna ken, think- 
 ing the thing out calmly now, but what I was 
 like a wild beast drunk with blood." 
 
 " What was the most ye evor spent in a 
 week?" 
 
 "I could teU ye that, but I would rather ye 
 wanted to ken what was the most I ever spent 
 in a nicht." 
 
 " How muckle ? ' 
 
 "Try a guess." 
 
 " Twa shillings ? 
 
 " Twa shillings ! " cried Haggart, with a 
 contempt that would have been severe had the 
 coins been pennies ; " ay, sax shillings is 
 nearer the mark." 
 
 " In one nicht ? " 
 
 " Ay, in one single nicht." 
 
 " Ye must have lost some of it ? " 
 
 " Not a bawbee. Ah, T'nowhead, man, ye 
 little ken how the money goes in grand towns. 
 Them as hves like lords must spend like lords." 
 
 " That's reasonable enough, but I would 
 
A TILLTLOSS SCANDAL. 59 
 
 like to hear the price o£ ilka thing ye got that 
 nicht ? " 
 
 " And I could tell ye. What do ye say to 
 a shilling and saxpence for a bed ? " 
 
 " I say it was an intake." 
 
 " Of course it was, but I didna grudge it." 
 
 " Ye didna ? " 
 
 "No, I didna. It was in Edinburgh, and 
 my last nicht in the place, and also my last 
 button, so I thinks to mysel' I'll have one tre- 
 mendous, memorable nicht, and then I'll go 
 hame. Lads, I was a sort of wearying for 
 Chirsty." 
 
 " Ay, but there's ioxiv shillings and sax- 
 pence to account for yet." 
 
 " There is so. Saxpence of it goes for a 
 glass of whisky in the smoking-room. Lads, 
 that smoking-room was a sight utterly baffling 
 imagination. There was no chairs in it ex- 
 cept great muckle saft ones, a hantle safter 
 than a chaff bed, and in ilka chair some noble- 
 man or other with his feet up in the air. Ay, 
 I a sort of slipped the first time I tried a chair, 
 but I wasna to be beat, for thinks I, ' Lords 
 ye may be, but I have paid one and sax for 
 my bed as weel as you, and this nicht I'll be a 
 
60 A TILLl'LOSS SCANDAL. 
 
 lord too ! ' Keeping the one and sax before 
 me made me bold, and soon I was sprawling 
 in a chair with my legs sticking ower the arm 
 with the best of them. Ay, it wasna so much 
 enjoyable as awe-inspiring." 
 
 " That just brings ye up to twa shillings." 
 
 " Weel, there was another one and sax for 
 breakfast." 
 
 " Astounding ! " 
 
 " Oh, a haver, of course, but we got as 
 muckle as we liked, and I assure ye it's amaz- 
 ing how much ye can eat, when ye ken ye 
 have to pay for it at ony rate. Then there 
 was ninepence for a luncheon." 
 
 "What's that?" 
 
 " I didna ken mysel' when I heard them 
 speaking about it, but it turned out to be a 
 grand name for a rabbit." 
 
 " Man, is there rabbits in Edinburgh ? " 
 
 " Next there was threepence of a present to 
 the waiter-loon, and I finished up with a shil- 
 ling's worth of sangwiches." 
 
 " Na, that's just five and saxpence." 
 
 Haggart, however, would not always teU 
 how the remaining sixpence went. At first he 
 admitted having squandered it on the theatre, 
 
A TILLYLOSS SCANDAL. 61 
 
 but after he was landed by Chirsty in the Auld 
 Licht kirk he withdrew this reminiscence, and 
 put another sixpence-worth in the smoking- 
 room in its place. 
 
 As a convincing proof of the size of Edin- 
 burgh, Haggart could tell us how he lost his 
 first lodgings in it. They were next house to 
 a shop which had a great show of vegetables 
 on a board at the door, and Haggart trusted 
 to this shop as a landmark. When he returned 
 to the street, however, there were greengrocery 
 shops everywhere, and after asking at a number 
 of doors if it was here he lived, he gave up 
 the search. This experience has been paralleled 
 in later days by a Tilliedrum minister, who 
 went for a holiday to London, and forgot the 
 name of the hotel he was staying at ; so he 
 telegraphed to Tilliedrum to his wife, asking 
 her to tell him what address he had given her 
 when he wrote, and she telegraphed back to 
 him to come home at once. 
 
 LiliB all the great towns Haggart visited, 
 Edinburgh proved to be running with low 
 characters, with whom, as well as with the 
 flower of the place — for he was received every- 
 where — ^he had many strange adventures. His 
 
62 A TILLY LOSS SCANDAL. 
 
 affair with the bailie would make a long story 
 itself, if told in full as he told it ; also what he 
 did to the piper ; how he climbed up the 
 Castle rocks for a wager ; why he once marched 
 indignantly out of a church in the middle of 
 the singing; the circumstances in which he 
 cut off his sixth button; his heroic defense of 
 a lady who had been attacked by a footpad; 
 his adventures with the soldier who was in 
 love and had a silver snuffbox ; his odd meeting 
 with James Stewart, lawful King of Great 
 Britain and Ireland. With this personage, 
 between whom and a throne there only stood 
 the constables, Haggart of Thrums hobnobbed 
 on equal terms. The way they met was this. 
 Haggart was desirous of the sensation of 
 driving in a carriage, but grudged much out- 
 lay on an experience that would soon be over. 
 He accordingly opened the door of a street 
 vehicle and stepped in, when the driver was 
 not looking. They had a pleasant drive along 
 famous Princes Street and would probably have 
 gone farther had not Haggart become aware 
 that someone was hanging on behind. In his 
 indignation he called the driver's attention 
 to this, which led to his own eviction. The 
 
A TILLTLOSS SCANDAL. 63 
 
 hanger-on proved to be no other than the 
 hapless monarch, with whom Haggart subse- 
 quently broke a button. For a king, James 
 Stewart, who disguised his royal person in 
 corduroys, was, as Haggart allowed, very ill in 
 order. The spite of the authorities had crushed 
 that once proud spirit, and darkened his in- 
 tellect, and he took his friend to a gambling- 
 house, where he nodded to the proprietor. 
 
 " Whether they were in company, with de- 
 signs on my buttons," Haggart has said, " I'm 
 not in a position to say, but I bear no iU-wUl 
 to them. They treated me most honorable. 
 Ay, the king, as we may call him if we speak 
 in a low voice, advises me strong to gamble a 
 button at one go, for, says he, ' You're sure to 
 win.' Lads, it's no for me to say a word 
 against him, but I thocht I saw him wink to 
 the proprietor lad, and so I says in a loud voice, 
 says I, ' I'll gamble hal£-a-crown first, and if 
 I win, then I'll put down a button.' The 
 proprietor a sort of nods to the king at that, 
 and I plunks down my half-crown. Weel, lads 
 I won five shillings in a clink." 
 
 " Ay, but they were just waiting for your 
 guinea." 
 
64 A TILLYLOSS SCANDAL. 
 
 " It may have been so, Andrew, but we 
 have no proof of that ; for, ye see, as soon as 
 I got the five shillings and had buttoned it up 
 in my pouch, I says, ' I'll be stepping hame 
 now,' I says, and away I goes. Ye canna say 
 but what they treated me honorable." 
 
 " They had looked thrawn ? " 
 
 " Ou, they did ; but a man's face is his own 
 to twist it as he pleases." 
 
 " And ye never saw the king again? " 
 
 " Ay, I met him after that in a close. I 
 gave the aristocratic crittur saxpence." 
 
 " I'U tell ye what, Tammas Haggart : if he 
 was proclaimed king, he would very likely send 
 for ye to the palace and make ye a knight." 
 
 " Man, Snecky, I put him through his cate- 
 chism on that very subject, but he had no hope. 
 Ye canna think how complete despondent he 
 was." 
 
 " Ye're sure he was a genuine Pretender ? " 
 
 " Na faags ! But when ye're traveling it 
 doesna do to let on what ye think, and I own 
 it's a kind of satisfaction to me now to picture 
 mysel' diddling a king out of five shillings." 
 
 " It's a satisfaction to everybody in Thrums, 
 Tammas, and more particular to TiUyloss." 
 
A TILLYLOSS SCANDAL. 65 
 
 " Ay, Tilly has the credit of it in a manner 
 of speaking. And it was just touch and go 
 that I didna do a thing with the siUer as would 
 have commemorated that adventure among 
 future ages." 
 
 "Ay, man?" 
 
 " I had the notion to get bawbees for the 
 money, namely, one hundred and thirty-twa 
 bawbees, for of course I didna count the sax- 
 pence. Well, what was I to do with them ? " 
 
 " Put the whole lot in the kirk-plate the first 
 Sabbath day after ye came back to Thrums? " 
 
 " Na, na. My idea was to present a bawbee 
 to a hundred and thirty-twa folk in Thrums, 
 so as they could keep it round their necks or 
 in a drawer as a memento of one of their 
 humble fellow-townsmen." 
 
 " No humble, surely ? " 
 
 "Maybe no, but when ye do a thing in a big 
 public way it's the proper custom to speak of 
 yersel' as a puir crittur, and leave the other 
 speakers to tell the truth about ye." 
 
 " It's a pity ye didna carry out that notion." 
 
 " Na, it's no, for I had a better ane after, 
 the which I did carry out." 
 
 " Yea? " 
 
 5 
 
66 A TILLYLOSS SCANDAL, 
 
 "Ay, I bocht a broach to Chirsty with the 
 siUer." 
 
 " Ho, ho, that's whaur she got the broach ? " 
 
 " It is so, and though I dinna want to boast, 
 nobody having less need to do so, I can tell ye 
 it was the biggest broach in Edinburgh at the 
 price." 
 
 Edinburgh was only a corner in Haggart's 
 field of corn, and from it I have not pulled 
 half-a-dozen stalks. He was in various other 
 great centers of adventure, and even in wander- 
 ing between them he had experiences such as 
 would have been a load for any ordinary man's 
 back. Once he turned showman, when the 
 actors were paid in the pennies flung at them 
 by admirers in the audience. Haggart made 
 for himself a long blood-red nose, which proved 
 such an irresistible target for moneyed sports- 
 men that the other players complained to the 
 management. He sailed up canals swarming 
 with monsters of the deep. He proved such 
 an agreeable companion at farms that some- 
 times he had to escape in the night. He 
 rescued a child from drowning and cowed a 
 tiger by the power of the human eye, exactly 
 as these thinsfs are done in a book which 
 
A TILLTL0S8 SCANDAL. 67 
 
 belonged to Chirsty. He had eleven guineas 
 with him when he set out, and without a note- 
 book he could teU how every penny of the 
 money was spent. Prices, indeed, he remem- 
 bered better than anything. 
 
 I might as well attempt to walk up the wall 
 of a house as to cut my way through Haggart's 
 corn-field. Before arriving at the field I 
 thought to get through it by taking the buttons 
 one by one, but here I am at the end of a 
 chapter, and scarcely any of the corn is behind 
 me. I now see that no biographer will ever be 
 able to treat Haggart on the grand scale he de- 
 mands ; for humiUty wiU force those who knew 
 him in his prime to draw back scared from the 
 attempt, while younger admirers have not the 
 shadow of his personahty to warn them of their 
 responsibUity. For my own part, I pubHcly 
 back out of the field, and sit down on the doctor's 
 dyke awaiting Haggart's return to Thrums. 
 
68 A TILLTLOSS SCANDAL. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE RETURN OF HAGGART. 
 
 Haggart came home on a Saturday evening', 
 when the water-barrels were running over, and 
 our muddy roads had lost their grip. But at 
 aU times he took small note of the weather, 
 and often said it was a fine day out of polite- 
 ness to the acquaintances he met casually, 
 when Tilly loss dripped in rain. To a man 
 who has his loom for master it only occurs as 
 an afterthought to look out at the window. 
 
 His shortest and natural route would have 
 taken the wanderer to Tillyloss without zig- 
 zagging him through the rest of Thrums, but 
 he made a circuit of the town, and came march- 
 ing down the Roods. 
 
 " I wanted to burst upon the place sudden 
 like," he admitted, " and to let everybody see 
 me. I dinna deny but what it was a proud 
 
A TILLYLOSS SCANDAL. 69 
 
 moment, lads, as Thrums came in sicht. I had 
 naturally a sort of contempt for the placey, 
 and yet I was fell awid to be back in it too, 
 just as a body is glad to slip into his bed at 
 nicht. Ay, foreign parts is grand for advent- 
 ure, but Thrums for company." 
 
 At the top of the Eoods he was recognized 
 by two boys who had been to a farm for milk, 
 and were playing at swinging their flagon 
 over their heads without dropping its contents. 
 The apparition stayed the flagon in the air, 
 and the boys clattered off screaming. Their 
 father had subsequently high words with 
 Tammas, who refused to refund the price of 
 the milk. 
 
 " Though my expectations was high," 
 Haggart said, " they were completely beaten 
 by the reality. Nothing could have been 
 more gratifying than the sensation I created, 
 not only among laddies and lassies but among 
 grown men and women. Very weel I ken 
 that Dan'l Strachen pretends he stood his 
 ground when I came upon him at the mouth 
 of Saunders Rae's close, but whaur was the 
 honor in that, when the crittur was paralyzed 
 with fear ? Ay, he wasna the only man that 
 
70 A TILLYLOSS SCANDAL. 
 
 lost his legs in the Eoods that day ; WiU'um 
 Crewe being another. Snecky Hobart, you 
 was one of them as I walked into at Peter 
 Lambie's shop door, and I'll never speak to ye 
 again if ye dinna allow as I scattered ye like a 
 showman in the square does when he passes 
 round the hat." 
 
 " I allow, Tammas, as I made my feet my 
 friend that nicht." 
 
 " And did I no send the women flying and 
 skirling in all directions ? Was it me or was 
 it no me that made Mysy Dinnie faint on her 
 back in the corner of the school-wynd ? " 
 
 " It was you, Tammas, and michty boastful 
 the crittur was when she came to, and heard 
 she had fainted." 
 
 " And there's a curran women as says they 
 hung out at their windows looking at me. I 
 would Hke to hear of one proved case in which 
 ony woman did that except at a second story 
 window ? 
 
 " Sal, they didna dare look out at low win- 
 dows. Na, they were more like putting on 
 their shutters. 
 
 " And did some of them no bar their doors, 
 and am I lying when I say Lisbeth Whamand 
 
« 
 
 A TILLYLOSS SCANDAL. 71 
 
 up with her bairn out of the cradle and ran to 
 the door of the Auld Licht kirk, thinking I 
 couldna harm her there ? " 
 
 " You're speaking gospel, Tammas. And 
 it wasna to he wondered at that we should be 
 terrified, seeing we had buried ye five months 
 before." 
 
 " I'm no saying it was unnatural. I would 
 have been particular annoyed if ye had been 
 so stupid as to stand your ground. And what's 
 more, if I had met the Auld Licht minister he 
 would have run like the rest." 
 
 But this oft-repeated assertion of Haggart's 
 was usually received in silence. His extraor- 
 dinary imagination enabled him to conceive 
 this picture, but tq such a height we never 
 rose. 
 
 By the time Haggart reached the Tenements 
 the town had sufficiently recovered to follow 
 him at a distance. How he looked to the pop- 
 ulace has been frequently discussed, Peter 
 Lambie's description being regarded as the 
 best. 
 
 " Them of you," Peter would say, drawn to 
 the door of his shop by Haggart groups, " as 
 has been to the Glen Quharity Hieland sports, 
 
72 A TILLTL088 SCANDAL. 
 
 can call to mind the competition for best- 
 dressed Hielander. The Hielanders stands in 
 their glory in a row, and the grand leddies 
 picks out the best-dressed one. Weel, the com- 
 petitors tries to look as i£ they didna ken they 
 were being admired, implying as they're in- 
 different to whether they get the prize or no, 
 but, all the time, there's a sort of pleased smirk 
 on their faces, mixed up with a natural anxiety. 
 Ay, then, that's the look Tammas Haggart had 
 when he passed my shop." 
 
 " But ye saw a change come ower him, did 
 _, . 
 
 " I did. I was among them as ran after 
 him along the Tenements, and, though I just 
 saw his back, it wasna the back he had on 
 when he passed my shop. I would say, judg- 
 ing from his back, as his chest was sticking 
 out, and he walked with a sort of strut, like 
 the Hielander as has won the prize and kens it 
 would be a haver to make pretence of modesty 
 ony more." 
 
 " But ye never saw me look back, Pete," 
 Haggart said, when Lambie's version was pre- 
 sented to him. 
 
 " Na, it was astonishing how he could have 
 
A TILLYLOSS SCANDAL. 73 
 
 kept frae turning your head. Ye was like one 
 unaware that there was sich a crowd running 
 after ye." 
 
 " Ay, lad, but very weel I kent for all that. 
 Thinks I to mysel' as I walks on before ye — 
 ' This scene winna be forgotten for many a 
 year.' " 
 
 " And it will not, Tammas. It did the work 
 of the town for a nine days. Ay, I've often 
 said myself that you walked hame that nicht 
 more like a circus procession than a single man. 
 The only thing I a kind of shake my head at 
 is your saying ye wasna a humorist at that 
 time." 
 
 "I didna just gang that length, Pete. I 
 was a humorist and I wasna a humorist. My 
 humor was just peeping out of its hole like a 
 rabbit, as ye micht say." 
 
 " Ye said as when ye started on your wan- 
 derings it was like putting yoursel', considered 
 as a humorist, on the fire to boil. Weel, then, 
 I say as ye had come aboil when ye marched 
 through Thrums." 
 
 " Na, Lookaboutyou, it's an ingenious argu- 
 ment that ; but ye've shot ower the top of the 
 target, lad. Ye've all seen water so terrible 
 
74 ^ TILLTLOSS SCANDAL. 
 
 near the boil that if ye touch it with your 
 finger it does begin to boil ? " 
 
 " Ay, that's true ; but a spoon is better to 
 touch it with, in case you burn your finger." 
 
 Lookaboutyou got a laugh for this, which 
 annoyed Tammas. 
 
 " Take care, Lookaboutyou," he said, warn- 
 ingly, " or I'll let ye see as my humor can burn 
 too. I ken a sarcastic thing to say to ye, my 
 man." 
 
 " But what about the water so near the 
 boil ? " asked Hobart, while Lookaboutyou 
 shrunk back. 
 
 " My humor was in that condition," said Hag- 
 gart, still eyeing the foolish farmer threat- 
 eningly, " when I came back to Thrums. It 
 just needed a touch to make it boil." 
 
 " And, sal, it got the touch ! " 
 
 " Ay, I admit that ; but no till the Monday." 
 
 We go back to the march from the Roods to 
 TiUyloss. In less time than it would have 
 taken Haggart to bring his sarcastic shaft from 
 the depths where he stowed these things and 
 fire it into Lookaboutyou, he had walked trium- 
 phantly to TUlyloss, and turned up the road 
 that was presently to be named after him. 
 
A TILLYLOSS SCANDAL. 75 
 
 His tail of fellow-townsmen came to a stop at 
 the pump, where they had a good view of 
 Haggart's house, all but a few daring ones, 
 nearly all women, who ran • up the dyke, in 
 hope of witnessing the meeting with Chirsty. 
 
 " I suppose, lads," Haggart said to us, 
 " that ye're thinking my arrival at Tillyloss 
 was the crowning moment of my glory? " 
 
 " It was bound to be." 
 
 " So ye think, Andrew ; but that just shows 
 how little ye ken about the human heart. I 
 got as far as Tillyloss terribly windy at the 
 way ye had honored me ; but, lads, something 
 came ower me at sicht of that auld outside stair. 
 Ay, it had a michty hame-like look." 
 
 " I 've heard tell ye stopped and gazed at it, 
 like grand folk admiring the view." 
 
 " Ay, lathies, I daursay I did so ; but it 
 wasna the view I was thinking about. I'll 
 warrant ye couldna say what was in my mind ? " 
 
 "Your funeral?" 
 
 " I never gave it a thocht. Na, but I'll teU 
 ye : I was thinking of Chirsty Todd." 
 
 " Ay, and the startle she was to get ? " 
 
 " No, Snecky ; it's an astonishing thing, but 
 the moment my e'en saw that outside stair I 
 
70 A TILLTL0S8 SCANDAL. 
 
 completely lost heart, and frae being lifted up 
 with pride, down goes my courage like a bucket 
 in a well. Was it the stair as terrified me ? 
 Na, it was Chirsty Todd. Lads, I faced the 
 whole drove of ye as bold as a king sitting 
 down at the head of his tea table ; but the 
 thocht of Chirsty Todd brocht my legs to a 
 stop. Ay, for all we may say to the contrairy, 
 is there a man in Thrums as hasna a kind of 
 fear of his wife ? " 
 
 At this question Haggart's listeners usually 
 looked different ways. 
 
 " Lads," continued Tammas, " it ran through 
 me suddenly, hke a cold blast of wind — ' What 
 if Chirsty shouldna be glad to see me back ? ' 
 and I regretted michty that I hadna halved the 
 guineas with her. Ay, I teU ye openly, as I 
 found mysel' getting smaller, like a gas-baU 
 with a hole in it, and I a kind of lost sight of 
 all I had to boast of. I was ashamed of mysel' 
 and also in mortal terror of Chirsty Todd. 
 Ay, but I never let her ken that : na, na ; a 
 man has to be wary about what he tells his 
 wife." 
 
 " He has so, for she's sure to fling it at him 
 by and by like a wet clout. Women has ter- 
 
A TILLTLOSS SCANDAL. 77 
 
 rible memories for what ye blurt out to 
 them." 
 
 " Ye're repeating my words, Rob, as i£ they 
 were your own ; but what ye say is true. 
 Women doesna understand about men's minds 
 being prof ounder than theirs, and consequently 
 waur to manage." 
 
 " That's so, and it's a truth ye daurna men- 
 tion to them. But ye was come to the outside 
 stair, Tammas." 
 
 " Ay, I was. Lads, I climbed that stair aU 
 of a tremble, and my hand was shaking so 
 muckle that for a minute I couldna turn the 
 handle of the door." 
 
 " We saw as ye a sort of tottered." 
 
 " Ay, I was uneasy ; and even when the door 
 opened I didna just venture inside. Na, I had 
 a feeling as it was a judicious thing to keep a 
 grip of the door. Weel, lathies, I stood there 
 keeking in, and what does I see but Chirsty 
 Todd sitting into the fire, with my auld pipe 
 in her mouth. Ay, there she sat blasting." 
 
 " How did that affect ye, Tammas? " 
 
 "How did it affect me? It angered me 
 most michty to see her enjoying hersel', and me 
 thocht to be no more." 
 
78 A TILLYLOSS SCANDAL. 
 
 " ' Ye heartless limmer,' I says to mysel', and 
 that reminds me as a man is master in his own 
 house, so I bangs the door to and walks in." 
 
 " Wha spoke first ? " 
 
 " Oh, I spoke first. I spoke just as her een 
 Hchted on me." 
 
 " Ye had said a memorable thing ? " 
 
 " I canna say I did. No, Pete. I just gave 
 her a sly kind of look, and I says, 'Ay, Chirsty.' " 
 
 " She screamed, they say ? " 
 
 " She did so, and the pipe fell from her 
 mouth. Ay, it's a gratification to me to ken 
 that she did scream." 
 
 "And what happened next ? " 
 
 " She spyed at me suspiciously ; and says 
 she, ' Tammas Haggart, are you in the flesh ? ' 
 to which I replies, ' I am so, Chirsty.' ' Then,' 
 cries she sharply, ' take your dirty feet off my 
 clean floor ! ' " 
 
 " And did ye ? " 
 
 " Ay, I put them on the fender ; and she 
 cries, ' Take your dirty feet off the fender.' 
 
 " Lads, I thocht it was best to sing small, 
 so I took off my boots, and she sat glowering 
 at me, but never speaking. ' Ay, Chirsty,' 
 I says, ' ye've had rain I'm thinking ; ' and 
 
A TILLTLOSS SCANDAL. 79 
 
 she says, ' The rain's neither here nor there ; 
 the question is, How did you break out ? ' 
 Ay, the crittur thocht I had broken out of my 
 grave." 
 
 " We all thocht that." 
 
 " Nat'raUy ye did. Weal, I began my story 
 at the beginning, but with the impatience 
 of a woman she aye said, ' I dinna want to 
 hear that, I want to ken how you broke 
 out ! ' " 
 
 " But she wanted to hear about the siller in 
 the buttons ? " 
 
 " Ay, but I tried to sUther ower the but- 
 tons, fearing she would be mad at me for 
 spending them. And, losh, mad she was ! I 
 explained to her as I put them to good use 
 by improving my mind, but she says, ' Dinna 
 blather about your mind to me, or I'll take 
 the poker to ye ! ' Chirsty was always fond 
 of language." 
 
 " But what about the Well-wisher ? " 
 
 " Oh, that was a queery. I says to Chirsty, 
 * I did not forget your sufferings, Chirsty, for 
 I'm the WeU-wisher.' At first she didna un- 
 derstand, but then she minds and says, 'It 
 was you as sent that bit cheese with D. 
 
80 A TILLTLOSS SCANDAL. 
 
 Fittis, was it,? ' Lads, then it came out as 
 the cheese was standing in the press un- 
 touched. Ay, I tore it in twa with my hands, 
 and out rolls the guinea. She had never 
 dreamed of there heing siUer in the cheese." 
 
 " Na, she was terrified to touch the cheese. 
 I mind when I could have hocht it frae her for 
 twa or three bawbees. Ay, what chances a 
 body misses. But she had been pleasanter 
 with ye after she got the guinea ? " 
 
 " I can hardly say that. She nipped it up 
 quick, and tells me to go on with my story. 
 Weel, I did so in a leisurely way, her aye nag- 
 ging at me to come to the quarry, as I soon had 
 to do. I need scarce tell ye she was michty 
 surprised it wasna me ye buried, but, after that 
 was cleared up, I saw her mind wasna on what 
 I was saying to her. No, lads, I was the 
 length of Dundee in my story when she jumps 
 up, and away she goes to the lowest shelf in 
 the dresser. I stopped in my talk and watched 
 her. She pulls out the iron and lays it on the 
 table, then she shoves a heater into the fire, 
 and brings an auld dicky out of a drawer. 
 Lads, I had a presentiment what she was 
 after." 
 
A TILLTLOSS SCANDAL. 81 
 
 " ' What are ye doing, Chirsty ? ' I says 
 ■with misgivings. 
 
 " ' I'm to iron a dicky for ye to wear to- 
 morrow,' she cries, and she kicks my foot off 
 the fender. 
 
 " ' I'm no going to the kirk,' I warns her. 
 
 " ' Are ye no ? ' says she ; ' ye gang twice, 
 Tammas Haggart, though the Auld Licht 
 minister has to drive ye to the door with a 
 stick.' 
 
 " Ay, when I heard she had joined the 
 Auld Lichts I kent I was done with lazy 
 Sabbaths. Weel, she ironed away at that 
 dicky with tremendous energy, and then aU 
 at once she lays down the iron and she cries, 
 
 " ' Keeps us aU, I had forgotten ! ' She 
 was the picture of woe. 
 
 " What's the matter, Chirsty ? ' I says. 
 
 '"She stood there wringing her hands. 
 
 " ' Ye canna gang to the kirk,' she moans. 
 * for ye have no clothes.' 
 
 " ' No clothes ! ' I cries. ' I have my 
 blacks.' 
 
 " ' They're gone,' she says; 
 
 " ' Gone, ye limmer ! ' I says, * wha has 
 
 them ? ' 
 
 6 
 
82 A TILLTLOSS SCANDAL. 
 
 " ' Davit Whamand,' she says ' has the coat, 
 and Hender Haggart the waistcoat and the 
 hat.' 
 
 " Ay, lads, I can tell ye this composedly 
 now, but I was fuming at the time. Chirsty's 
 passion for genteelity was such that she had 
 imitated grand folk's customs and given away 
 the clothes as had been worn by the corpse." 
 
 " That came of taking a wife frae Bal- 
 ribbie." 
 
 " Ay, and it's not the only proof of Chirsty's 
 vanity, for, as ye all ken, she continued to 
 wear her crape to the kirk long after I came 
 back." 
 
 " Because she thocht it set her ? " 
 
 " Ou, rather, just because she had it. But 
 it was aggravating to me to have to walk with 
 her to the kirk, and her in widow's crapes. It 
 would have provoked an ordinary man to the 
 drink." 
 
 " It would so, but what said ye when ye 
 heard the blacks was gone ? " 
 
 " Said ? It wasna a time for saying. I 
 shoved my feet into my boots and flung on my 
 bonnet, and hurries to the door, 
 
 " ' Whaur are ye going ? ' cries Chirsty. 
 
A TILLYLOSS SCANDAL. 83 
 
 " ' To demand back my blacks,' I says, 
 dashing open the door with my fist. Ye may 
 mind there was some of ye keeking in at the 
 door and the window, trying to hearken to the 
 conversation." 
 
 " Ay, and we flew frae ye as if ye was the Riot 
 Act. But we was thinking by that time as ye 
 micht be a sort of living." 
 
 " Maybe, but I wasna thinking about you. 
 Na, it was the blacks as was on my mind, and 
 away I goes." 
 
 " Ye ran." 
 
 " Yes, I ran straight to the Tenements to 
 Davit Whamand's house. Lads, I said the pot 
 was very near the boil when I marched down 
 the Roods, but my humor was getting cold 
 again. Ay, Chirsty Todd had suddenly lifted 
 the pot off the fire." 
 
84 A TILLTLOSS SCANDAL. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 m WHICH A BIETH IS RECORDED. 
 
 " Davit's collie barked at me," Haggart 
 continued, " when it heard me lifting the 
 sneck o£ the door, but I cowed it with a stern 
 look, and stepped inside. The wife was away 
 cracking about me to Lizzie Linn, but there 
 was Davit himsel with a bantam cock on his 
 knee, the which was aihng, and he was forcing 
 a little butter into its nib. He let the beast 
 fall when he saw me, and I was angered to 
 notice as he had been occupied with a bantam 
 when he should have been discussing me with 
 consternation." 
 
 " It was the greater surprise to him when in 
 ye marched." 
 
 " Ay, but my desire to be thocht a ghost 
 had gone, and I says at once, ' Dinna stand 
 trembling there, Davit Whamand,' I says, ' for 
 
A TILLTLOSS SCANDAL. 85 
 
 I'm in the flesh, and so you'll please hand ower 
 my black coat ! ' He hardly believed I was 
 human at first, but at the mention of the coat 
 he grows stiff and hard, and says he, ' What 
 black coat ? ' 
 
 " ' Deception will not avail ye, Davit Wha- 
 mand,' says I, ' for Chirsty has confessed all.' 
 
 " ' The coat's mine,' says Davit, glowering. 
 
 " ' I want that coat direct,' I says. 
 
 " ' Think shame o' yoursel',' says he, ' and 
 you a corpse this half year.' 
 
 " The crittur tried to speak like a minister, 
 but I waved away his argument with my 
 hand. 
 
 " ' Back to the cemetery, ye shameless corp, 
 says he, ' and I'll mention this to nobody ; but 
 i£ ye didna gang peaceably we'll call out the 
 constables.' 
 
 " ' Dinna haver, Davit Whamand,' I retorts, 
 ' for ye ken fine I'm in the flesh, and if ye 
 dinna produce my coat immediately I'll take 
 the law of ye.' 
 
 " ' Will ye ? ' he sneers ; ' and what micht ye 
 caU yoursel ? ' 
 
 " ' I'll call mysel by my own name, namely, 
 Tammas Haggart,' I thunders. 
 
86 A TILLYLOSS SCANDAL. 
 
 " ' Yea, yea,' says he ; ' I'm thinking a corp 
 hands on his name to his auldest son, and 
 Tammas Haggart being dead without a son the 
 name becomes extinct.' 
 
 " Lads, that did stagger me a minute, but 
 then I minds I'm living, and I cries, ' Ye sly 
 crittur, I'm no dead.' 
 
 " ' Are ye not ? ' says he ; ' I think ye 
 are.' 
 
 " ' Do I look dead ? ' I argues. 
 
 " ' Look counts for nothing before a baiUe,' 
 says he, ' and if ye annoy me I'll bring wit- 
 nesses to prove you're dead. Yes, I'll pro- 
 duce the widow in her crapes, and them as 
 coffined ye.' 
 
 " ' Ay,' I cries, ' but I'll produce mysel'.' 
 
 " ' The waur for you,' says he, ' for if ye 
 try to overthrow the law we'll bury ye again, 
 though it should be at the pubhc expense.' 
 
 " Lads, that made me uneasy, and all I could 
 think to do was just to fling out my foot at the 
 bantam. 
 
 " ' Ye daur look me in the face, Davit 
 Whamand,' I says, ' and pretend as I'm no 
 mysel' ? ' 
 
 *' * I daur do so,' he says ; ' and not on'y are 
 
A TILLYLOSS SCANDAL. 87 
 
 ye no yersel', but I would never have recognized 
 ye for such.' 
 
 " ' So, so,' I remarks ; ' and ye refuse to 
 dehver up my coat ? ' 
 
 " ' Yes,' he says, ' and what's more I never 
 had your coat.' 
 
 " Lads, that was his cautiousness in case twa 
 lines of defense was needed before the bailie ; 
 but I said no more to him, for now the house 
 began to fiU with folk wanting to make sure of 
 me, and I was keen to convince them I was in 
 the flesh before Davit prejudiced them. Ay, 
 Robbie, you was one of them as convoyed me 
 to Hender Haggart's." 
 
 " I was, Tammas, and when ye shut the door 
 on me a mask of folk came round me to hear 
 how ye had broke out." 
 
 " I daursay that, but their curiosity didna 
 interest me now. Ye mind when we got to 
 Hender's house it was black and dark, him 
 pretending to be away to his bed ? Ay, but 
 the smeU of roasting potatoes behed that. As 
 we ken now, Hender had been warned that I 
 was at Davit's demanding back the coat, and 
 he suspected I would come next to him for the 
 Waistcoat and the hat." 
 
88 A TILLYLOSS SCANDAL. 
 
 " Ay, but lie had to let ye in." 
 
 " Ou, I would have broken in the door rather 
 than have been beat, and in the tail of the day 
 Hender takes the snib off the door." 
 
 " He pretended he thocht ye a ghost too, did 
 he no?" 
 
 " No, no, that's a made up story. Hender 
 and his wife had agreed to pretend that, but 
 when Hender came to the door he became 
 stupid-Kke, and when I says ' Ay, Hender,' he 
 says ' Ay, Tammas.' I've heard his wife raged 
 at him about it after. 
 
 " ' Nanny,' I says to the wife, ' it's me back 
 again, and ye'll oblige by handing ower my 
 waistcoat and my hat.' 
 
 " I've forgotten to tell ye that when I walked 
 in, Nanny was standing on a stool with a poker 
 in her hand, the which she was using to shove 
 something on the top of the press out of sicht. 
 She jumped down hurriedly, but looking bold, 
 and says she, ' These mice is very troublesome.' 
 
 " Weel, I had a presentiment, and I says, 
 ' Give me the poker, Nanny, and I'U get at the 
 mice ! ' Says she, ' Na, na ' ; and she lifts away 
 the stool. 
 
 " All this time Hender had been looking 
 
A TILLYLOSS SCANDAL. 89 
 
 very melancholy, but despite that, he was glad 
 to see me back, and he says in a sentimental 
 way, ' You're a stranger, Tammas,' says he. 
 
 " ' I am, Hender,' says I, ' and I want my 
 waistcoat, also my hat.' 
 
 " Hender gave a confused look to the wife, 
 and says she, ' The waistcoat has been sold for 
 rags, and I gave the hat to tinklers.' 
 
 " ' Hender Haggart,' says I, ' is this so ? ' 
 
 " Hender a sort of winked, meaning that we 
 could talk the thing ower when Nanny wasna 
 there, but I couldna wait. 
 
 " ' I think, Nanny,' says I, pointedly, ' as I'U 
 take a look at these mice of yours.' 
 
 " ' Ye'U do no sich things,' says she. 
 
 " ' I'm thinldng,' says I, ' as I'll find a black 
 waistcoat on the top of that press, and like^^se 
 a Sabbath hat.' -. 
 
 "Hender couldna help giving me an admir- 
 ing look for my quickness, but Nanny put her 
 back to the press, and says she, ' Hender, am I 
 to be insulted before your face ? ' 
 
 " Hender was perplexed, but he says to me, 
 ' Ye hear what Nanny says, Tammas ? ' 
 
 " ' Ay,' I says, ' I hear her.' 
 
 " 'He hears ye, Nanny,' says Hender. 
 
90 A TILLYLOSS SCANDAL. 
 
 " ' But I want my lawful possessions,' I 
 cries. 
 
 " Render hesitated again, but Nanny repeats, 
 'Hender, am I to be insulted before your 
 face?' 
 
 " ' Dinna insult her before my face,' Hender 
 whispers to me. 
 
 " ' I offer no insult,' I says, loud out, ' but 
 I've come for my waistcoat and my hat, and I 
 dinna budge till I get them.' 
 
 " ' Ye've a weary time before ye, then,' says 
 Nanny. 
 
 " ' I wonder ye wouldna be ashamed to keep 
 a man frae his belongings,' I said. 
 
 " ' Tell him they're yours, Hender,' she 
 cries. 
 
 " ' Ye see, Tammas,' says Hender, ' she says 
 they're mine.' 
 
 " ' Ay,' I says, ' but ye canna pretend they're 
 yours yersel', Hender ? ' 
 
 "'Most certainly ye can, Hender,' says 
 Nanny. 
 
 " ' Ye see that, Tammas,' says Hender, 
 triumphant. 
 
 " ' And how do ye make out as they are 
 yours ? ' I asks him. 
 
A TILLTLOSS SCANDAL. 91 
 
 " ' Tell him,' cries Nanny, ' as ye got them 
 for helping in his burial.' 
 
 " ' Tammas,' says Hender, ' that's how I got 
 them.' 
 
 " ' Maybe,' I says, ' but did I give ye them ? 
 
 " ' Say he was a corp,' Nanny cries. 
 
 " ' Meaning no disrespect, Tammas,' says 
 Hender, ' ye was a corp.' 
 
 " ' How could I have been a corp,' I argues, 
 ' when here I am speaking to ye ? ' 
 
 " Hender turned to Nanny for the answer to 
 this, but she showed him her back, so he just 
 said in a weak way, ' We'll leave the minister 
 to settle that.' 
 
 " ' Hender, ye gowk,' I says, ' ye ken I'm 
 living ; and if I'm living I'm no dead.' 
 
 " Lads, I regretted I hadna put it plain like 
 that to Davit Whamand. However, Hender 
 hadna the clear-headedness necessary to follow 
 out sich reasoning, and he replies, 
 
 " ' No doubt,' he says, ' ye are Hving in a 
 sense, but no in another sense.' 
 
 " ' I wasna the corp,' I cried. 
 
 " ' Weel, weel, Tammas,' says he, in a fell 
 dignified voice, ' we needna quarrel on a matter 
 of opinion.' 
 
92 A TILLTLOSS SCANDAL. 
 
 " I was just beginning to say as it was more 
 likely to be the waistcoat we would fall out 
 about, when in walks Chirsty in the most flur- 
 ried way. 
 
 " ' Tammas Haggart,' she pants, ' come hame 
 this instant ; the minister's waiting for ye.' 
 
 " Which minister ? " I asks. 
 
 " ' None other,' she says, looking proudly 
 at Nancy, 'than the Auld Licht minister.' 
 
 " Lads, I shook in my boots at that, and I 
 says, ' I winna come till I've got my hat and 
 my waistcoat.' 
 
 " ' What,' screams Chirsty, ' ye daur to keep 
 the minister waiting ! ' and she shoved me clean 
 out of the house." 
 
 What the minister said to Haggart is not 
 known, for Tammas never divulged the con- 
 versation. Those who remained on the watch 
 said that the minister looked very stern when 
 walking back to the manse, and that Chirsty 
 found her husband tractable for the rest of the 
 evening. The most we ever got out of Tam- 
 mas on the subject was that though he had 
 met many terrifying folk in his wanderings, 
 they were a herd of sheep compared to the 
 minister. He had sometimes to be enticed out 
 
A TILLYL08S SCANDAL. 93 
 
 of the reverie into which thought of the min- 
 ister plunged him. 
 
 " So it was next day ye dandered up to the 
 grave ? " we would say craftily, though well 
 aware that he did not leave the house till 
 Monday. 
 
 " Na, na, not on the Sabbath day. When I 
 wakened in the morning I admit I was terribly 
 anxious to see the grave, as was natural, but 
 thocht of the minister cowed me. I would 
 have ventured as far as the grave if I had been 
 able to persuade mysel' I wasna going for 
 pleasure, but pleasure it was, lads. Ay, there 
 was no denying that." 
 
 " Chirsty was at the kirk ? " 
 
 " She was so, and in her widow's crapes. I 
 watched her frae the window. Ay, it's no 
 everybody as has watched his own widow." 
 
 " Na, and it had been an impressive spectacle. 
 How would ye say she looked, Tammas ? " 
 
 " She looked proud, Robbie." 
 
 "She would; but what would ye say she 
 was proud of ? " 
 
 " Ah, Robbie, there you beat me. But I can 
 tell ye what she was proud of on the Monday." 
 
 "What?" 
 
94 A TILLYLOSS SCANDAL. 
 
 " Before porridge-time no less than seven 
 women, namely, three frae Tillyloss, twa frae 
 the Tenements, and twa frae the Eoods, chaps 
 at the door and invites her to a dish of tea. 
 That's what she was proud of, and I would Uke 
 to hear of ony other woman in this town, single 
 or married or a widow, as has had seven invita- 
 tions to her tea in one day." 
 
 " The thing's unparalleled ; hut of course it 
 was to hear about you that they speired her ? " 
 
 " Oh, of course, and also to get out of her 
 what the minister said to me. Ay, but can 
 ony of ye tell me what's the memorabhst thing 
 about these invitations ?" 
 
 "I dinna say I can, but it's something about 
 the grave." 
 
 " It's this, Snechy, that before Chirsty had 
 made up her mind whether to risk seven teas 
 in one day, I had become a humorist for life." 
 
 "Man, man, oh, losh! " 
 
 " Ay, and it's perfectly appalling to consider 
 as she was so excited about her invitations that 
 when I came down frae the cemetery she never 
 looked me in the face, and I had to say to her, 
 ' Chirsty Todd, do ye no see as something has 
 come ower me ? ' At that she says, ' I notice 
 
A TILLYLOSS SCANDAL. 95 
 
 you're making queer faces, but I dinna ken 
 what they mean.' ~ ' They mean, Chirsty Todd,' 
 says I, ' as I am now a humorist,' to which she 
 replies, ' Pick up that dish-clout.' " 
 
 " Keep us all ! But oh, man, a woman's 
 mind doesna easily rise to the sublime." 
 
 " It doesna, Pete, and I'll tell ye the reason ; 
 it's because of women, that is to say, richt- 
 minded women, aU having sich an adoration 
 for ministers." 
 
 " I dinna contradict ye, Tammas, but surely 
 that's a fearsome statement. Is ministers not 
 nearer the sublime than other folk? " 
 
 "They are, they are, and that's just it. 
 Ministers, ye may say, is always half road up 
 to the sublime. Weel, what's the result? 
 Women raises their een to gaze upon the sub- 
 lime, when they catch sicht of the minister, 
 and canna look ony higher." 
 
 "Sal, Tammas, you've solved it! But I 
 warrant ye couldna have said that tiU ye became 
 a humorist ? " 
 
 " No more than you could have said it yersel', 
 Robbie." 
 
 " Na, I dinna pretend I could have said it, 
 and even though I was to gang hame now and 
 
96 A TILLY LOSS SCANDAL. 
 
 say it in your very words, it wouldna have the 
 same show as when you say it." 
 
 " It would Sot, for ye would just blurt it 
 out, but them as watches me saying a humor- 
 ous thing notices the mental struggle before the 
 words comes up. Ay, the mental struggle's 
 like the servant in grand houses as puts his 
 head in at the door and cries, ' Leddies and 
 gentlemen, take your seats, for the dinner is 
 all but ready.' " 
 
 Early on Monday morning Haggart, the non- 
 humorist, woke for the last time. The day 
 was moderately fine, but gave no indication 
 that anything remarkable was about to happen. 
 Lookaboutyou, it is true, says that he noticed 
 a queer stillness in the air, and Snecky Hobart 
 spoke of an unusually restless night. It is 
 believed by some that the cocks of Tillyloss did 
 not crow that morning. But none of these 
 phenomena were noticed until it became natural 
 to search the memory for them, and Haggart 
 himself always said that it was a common day. 
 The fact, I suppose, is that an uncommon day 
 was not needed, for here was Haggart and 
 there was the cemetery. Nature never wastes 
 her materials. 
 
A TILLYLOSS SCANDAL. 97 
 
 Haggart was elated no doubt, but so would 
 any man have been in the circumstances. 
 For the last time Haggart, the non-humorist, 
 put off cleaning his boots for another day. 
 For the last time he combed his hair without 
 studying the effect in the piece of glass that 
 was glued to the wall. Never again would the 
 Haggart who briskly descended his outside 
 stair, forgetting to shut the door, enter that 
 room in which Chirsty was already baking ban- 
 nocks. It was a new Haggart who would re- 
 turn presently, Haggart of Haggart's Roady, 
 Haggart of Thrums, in short, Haggart the 
 humorist. 
 
 The last person to speak to Haggart, the non- 
 humorist, was James Spens, the last to see him 
 was Sanders Landels. Jamie met him at the 
 foot of Tillyloss, and Sanders passed him on 
 the burying-ground brae. Both were ordinary 
 persons, and they never distinguished them- 
 selves again. 
 
 It was not his grave that made Haggart 
 a humorist, but the gravestone. Two years 
 earlier he had erected a tombstone to the 
 memory of his relatives, but it had never struck 
 him that he would some day be able to read his 
 
98 A TILLY LOSS SCANDAL. 
 
 own fate on it. The grave is to the right of 
 the entrance to the cemetery, ahnost exactly 
 under the favorite seat known as the Bower, 
 and being at the bend of the path it comes sud- 
 denly into view. Haggart walked eagerly along 
 the path, an ordinary man upon the whole; 
 
 then all at once He looked 
 
 He looked again. This is what he read : 
 
 This Stone was Erected by 
 
 Thomas Haggaet 
 
 To THE Memory of Peter Haggart, 
 
 Father op the said Thomas, 
 
 Who departed this Life, Jan. 7, 1825. 
 
 Also here lies Jean Linn, or Haggart, 
 
 Mother op the said Thomas, 
 
 Died 1828. 
 
 Also Jean Haggart, 
 
 Sister op the said Thomas, 
 
 Died 1829. 
 
 Also Andrew Haggart, 
 
 Brother op the said Thomas, 
 
 Died 1831. 
 
 Also the said Thomas Himselp, 
 
 Died 1834. 
 
 Haggart sat down on the grave. In Thrums 
 common folk were doing common things — weav- 
 
A TILLYL0S8 SCANDAL. 99 
 
 ing, feeding the hens, supping porridge, carting 
 peats. 
 
 Haggart sat on the grave. In Thrums they 
 were thinking of their webs, of their dinner, 
 of well-scrubbed floors, of their love afEairs. 
 
 But Haggart sat on the grave, and a pot 
 began to boil. He has told us what happened. 
 Down in his inside sometliing was roaring, and 
 every moment the noise increased. He breathed 
 with difficulty. He was as a barrel swelling 
 but held in by hoops of iron. He rose to his 
 feet, for his tongue was hot and there was a 
 hissing in his throat, and the iron hoops pressed 
 more and more tightly. Suddenly the hissing 
 ceased, and he stood as still as salt. The roar- 
 ing far down died away. AU at once he was 
 tilted to the side, the hoops burst, and he began 
 to laugh. The pot was boiling. Haggart was 
 a humorist. 
 
 As soon as he reahzed what had happened 
 Haggart returned to TiUyloss. The fii-st to 
 see him was Tibbie Robbie, the first to speak 
 to him was William Lamb, the first to notice 
 the change was Snecky Hobart. 
 
 I only undertook to teU how Haggart became 
 
100 A TILLYLOSS SCANDAL. 
 
 a humorist, and here therefore my story ends. 
 I have shown how a lamp was lit in Thrums, 
 but not how it burned. Perhaps if I followed 
 Haggart to his end, as I should like to do, to 
 the time when the lamp flickered and a room 
 in the Tenements grew dark, some who have 
 smiled at an old man's tale would leave a tear 
 behind them to a weaver's memory. 
 
 " Na," Haggart often said, " we winna touch 
 the gravestone. It'U come in handy some day." 
 
 His humor, appetizing from the first, ripened 
 with the years. For a time this was his com- 
 ment on the tombstone : — 
 
 " Lads, lads, what a do we're preparing for 
 posterity." 
 
 Later in his life he said, 
 
 " It's almost cruel to cheat future generations 
 in this way." 
 
 His hair was white before he said, 
 
 " I dinna ken but what I should do the 
 honest thing, and have the date rubbed out." 
 
 And when there was a squeal in his voice, 
 he could add, 
 
 " No that it much matters." 
 
HOW GAVIN BIRSE PUT IT TO 
 MAG LOWNIE. 
 
 In a wet day the rain gathers in blobs on 
 the road that passes our Thrums garden. 
 Then it crawls into the cart-tracks, until the 
 road is streaked with water. Last, the water 
 gathers in heavy yellow pools. If the rain 
 still continues, clods of earth topple from the 
 garden dyke into the ditch. 
 
 On such a day, when even the dulseman 
 had gone into shelter, and the women scudded 
 by with their wrappers over their heads, came 
 Gavin Birse to our door. Gavin, who is the 
 Glen Quharity post, is still young, but has 
 never been quite the same man since some 
 amateurs in the Glen ironed his back for rheu- 
 matism. At present I am lodging in Thrums, 
 with Hendry M'Qumpha, and I thought Gavin 
 had called to have a crack with me. He sent 
 
102 HOW GAVIN BIESE PUT IT TO MAG LOWNIE. 
 
 his compliments up to the attic, however, by 
 Leeby, and would I come and be a witness ? 
 
 Gavin came up and explained. He had 
 taken off his scarf and thrust it into his pocket, 
 lest the rain should take the color out o£ it. 
 His boots cheeped, and his shoulders had risen 
 to his ears. He stood steaming before my fire. 
 
 " If it's no ower muckle to ask ye," he said, 
 "I would like ye for a witness." 
 
 " A witness ! But for what do you need a 
 witness, Gavin ? " 
 
 " I want ye," he said, " to come wi' me to 
 Mag's, and be a witness." 
 
 Gavin and Mag Birse had been engaged for 
 a year or more. Mag is the daughter of Janet 
 Ogilvy, who is best remembered as the body 
 that took the hill (that is, wandered about it) 
 for twelve hours on the day Mr. Dishart, the 
 Auld Licht minister, accepted a call to another 
 church. 
 
 " You don't mean to tell me, Gavin," I 
 asked, "that your marriage is to take place 
 to-day ? " 
 
 By the twist of his mouth I saw that he was 
 only deferring a smile. 
 
 " Far frae that," he said. 
 
HOW GAVIN BIRSE PUT IT TO MAG LOWNIE. 103 
 
 " All, then, you have quarreled, and I am 
 to speak up for you ? " 
 
 " Na, na," he said, " I dinna want ye to do 
 that above all things. It would be a favor if 
 ye could gi'e me a bad character." 
 
 This beat me, and, I daresay, my face 
 showed it. 
 
 "I'm no' juist what ye would call anxious to 
 marry Mag noo," said Gavin, without a 
 tremor. 
 
 I told him to go on. 
 
 " There's a lassie oot at Craigiebuckle," he 
 explained, " workin' on the farm — Jeanie Luke 
 by name. Ye may ha'e seen her ? " 
 
 "What of her ?" I asked, severely. 
 
 " Weel," said Gavin, stUl unabashed, " I'm 
 thinkin' noo 'at I would rather ha'e her." 
 
 Then he stated his case more fully. 
 
 " Ay, I thocht I liked Mag oncommon till I 
 saw Jeanie, an' I like her fine yet, but I pre- 
 fer the other ane. That state o' matters canna 
 gang on forever, so I came into Thrums the 
 day to settle 't one wy or another." 
 
 " And how," I asked, " do you propose 
 going about it? It is a somewhat dsHcate 
 business." 
 
104 HOW GAVIN BIUSE PUT IT TO MAGLOtVNlM. 
 
 " Ou, I see nae great difficulty in't. I'll 
 speir at Mag, blunt oot, i£ she'll let me a£E. 
 Yes, I'll put it to her plain." 
 
 " You're sure Jeanie would take you ? " 
 " Ay ; oh, there's nae fear o' that." 
 " But if Mag keeps you to your bargain ?" 
 " Weel, in that case there's nae harm done." 
 " You are in a great hurry, Gavin ? " 
 " Ye may say that ; but I want to be mar- 
 ried. The wifie I lodge wi' eanna last lang, 
 an' I would like to settle doon in some place." 
 " So you are on your way to Mag's now ? " 
 " Ay, we'll get her in atween twal' and 
 ane." 
 
 " Oh, yes ; but why do you want me to go 
 with you ? " 
 
 " I want ye for a witness. If she winna let 
 me aff, weel and guid ; and if she will, it's bet- 
 ter to ha'e a witness in case she should go back 
 on her word." 
 
 Gavin made his proposal briskly, and as 
 coolly as if he were only asking me to go fish- 
 ing ; but I did not accompany him to Mag's. 
 He left the house to look for another witness, 
 and about an hour afterwards Jess saw him 
 pass with Tammas Haggart. Tammas cried in 
 
HOW GA VIN BIRSE PUT IT TO MAG LOWNIE. 105 
 
 during the evening to tell us how the mission 
 prospered. 
 
 " Mind ye," said Tammas, a drop of water 
 hanging to the point of his nose, " I disclaim 
 all responsibility in the business. I ken Mag 
 weel for a thrifty, respectable woman, as her 
 mither was afore her, and so I said to Gavin 
 when he came to speir me." 
 
 " Ay, mony a pirn has Lisbeth filled to me," 
 said Hendry, settling down to a reminiscence. 
 
 " No to be ower hard on Gavin," continued 
 Tammas, forestalling Hendry, " he took what I 
 said in guid part; but aye when I stopped 
 speaking to draw breath, he says, ' The ques- 
 tion is, will ye come wi' me ? ' He was michty 
 made up in 's mind." 
 
 " Weel, ye went wi' him," suggested Jess, who 
 wanted to bring Tammas to the point. 
 
 " Ay," said the stone-breaker, " but no in sic 
 a hurry as that." 
 
 He worked his mouth round and round, to 
 clear the course, as it were, for a sarcasm. 
 
 " Fowk often say," he continued, " 'at 'am 
 quick beyond the ordinar' in seein' the humor- 
 ous side o' things." 
 
 Here Tammas paused, and looked at us. 
 
106 BOW GAVIN BIR8E PUT IT TO MAG LOWNIE. 
 
 " So ye are, Tammas," said Hendry. " Losh, 
 ye mind hoo ye saw the humorous side o' me 
 wearin' a pair o' boots 'at wisna marrows ! No, 
 the ane had a toe-piece on, an' the other hadna." 
 
 " Yo juist wore them sometimes when ye was 
 delvin'," broke in Jess, " ye have as guid a pair 
 o' boots as ony in Thrums." 
 
 " Ay, but I had worn them," said Hendry, 
 " at odd times for mair than a year, an' I had 
 never seen the humorous side o' them. 
 Weel, as fac as death (here he addressed me), 
 Tammas had just seen them twa or three times 
 when he saw the humorous side o' them. Syne 
 I saw their humorous side, too, but no till 
 Tammas pointed it oot." 
 
 " That was naething," said Tammas, " naething 
 ava to some things I've done." 
 
 " But what aboot Mag ? " said Leeby. 
 
 " "We wasna that length, was we ? "said Tam- 
 mas. " Na, we was speakin' aboot the humor- 
 ous side. Ay, wait a wee, I didna mention the 
 humorous side for naething." 
 
 He paused to reflect. 
 
 " Oh, yes," he said at last, brightening up, 
 " I was sayin' to ye hoo quick I was to see the 
 humorous side o' onything. Ay, then, what 
 
sow GAVIN- BIESEPUT IT TO MAG LOWNIE. 107 
 
 made me say that was 'at in a clink (flash) I saw 
 the humorous side o' Gavin's position." 
 
 " Man, man," said Hendry, admiringly, " and 
 what is 't?" 
 
 " Oh, it's this, there's something humorous in 
 speiria' a woman to let ye aff so as ye can be 
 married to another woman." 
 
 "I daursay there is," said Hendry, doubtfully. 
 
 " Did she let him aff ? " asked Jess, taking 
 the words out of Leeby's mouth. 
 
 " I'm comin' to that,' said Tammas. " Gavin 
 proposes to me after I had had my laugh " 
 
 " Yes," cried Hendry, banging the table with 
 his fist, " it has a humorous side. Ye're richt 
 again, Tammas." 
 
 " I wish ye wadna blatter (beat) the table," 
 said Jess, and then Tammas proceeded. 
 
 " Gavin wanted me to tak' paper an' ink an' 
 a pen wi' me, to write the proceedin's doon, but 
 I said, ' Na, na, I'll tak' paper, but no nae ink 
 nor nae pen, for there'll be ink an' a pen there.' 
 That was what I said." 
 
 " An' did she let him aff ? " asked Leeby. 
 
 " Weel," said Tammas, " aff we goes to Mag's 
 hoose, an' sure enough Mag was in. She was 
 alane, too ; so Gavin, no to waste time, juist sat 
 
108 SOW GAVIN BIRSE PUT IT TO MAG LOWNIE. 
 
 doon for politeness' sake, an' syne rises up again ; 
 an' says lie, 'Marget Lownie, I ha'e a solemn 
 question to the speir at ye, namely this, Will 
 you, Marget Lownie, let me, Gavin Birse, afE ? ' " 
 
 " Mag would start at that ? " 
 
 " Sal, she was braw an' cool. I thocht she 
 mun ha'e got wind o' his intentions aforehand, 
 for she just repHes, quiet-hke, ' Hoo do ye 
 want aff, Gavin ? ' " 
 
 " ' Because,' says he, like a book, ' my 
 affections has undergone a change.' 
 
 " ' Ye mean Jean Luke,' says Mag. 
 
 " ' That is wha I mean,' says Gavin, very 
 straitforrard." 
 
 " But she didna let him aff, did she ? " 
 
 " Na, she wasna the kind. Says she, ' 1 
 wonder to hear ye, Gavin, but 'am no goin' 
 to agree to naething o' that sort.' 
 
 " ' Think it ower,' says Ga\dn. 
 
 " ' Na, my mind's made up,' said she. 
 
 " ' Ye would sune get anither man,' he 
 says, earnestly. 
 
 "'Hoo do I ken that?' she speirs, rale 
 seriously, I thocht, for men's no sae easy to 
 get. 
 
 " ' Am sure o't,' Gavin says, wi' michty 
 
HOW GAVIN BinSEPUT IT TO MAG LO WNIE. 109 
 
 conviction in his voice, 'for ye're bonny to 
 look at, an' weel-kent for bein' a guid body.' 
 
 " ' Ay,' says Mag, ' I'm glad ye like me, 
 Gavin, for ye have to tak me.' " 
 
 " That put a clincher on him," interrupted 
 Hendry. 
 
 " He was loth to gie in," replied Tammas, 
 so he says, ' Ye think 'am a fine character, 
 Marget Lownie, but ye're very far mista'en. 
 I wouldna wonder but what I was lossin' my 
 place some o' thae days, an' syne whaur would 
 ye be ? — Marget Lownie,' he goes on, ' 'am 
 nat'rally lazy and fond o' the drink. As sure 
 as ye stand there, 'am a reglar deevil ! ' 
 
 " That was strong language," said Hendry, 
 " but he would be wantin to fleg (frighten) her? " 
 
 " Just so, but he didna manage 't, for Mag 
 says, ' We a' ha'e oor faults, Gavin, an' deevil 
 or no de'vil, ye 're the man for me ! ' 
 
 " Gavin thocht a bit," continued Tammas, 
 " an' syne he tries her on a new tack. ' Marget 
 Lowpie,' he says, ' ye're father's an auld man 
 noo, an' he has naebody but yersel' to look 
 after him. I'm thinkin' it would be kind o' 
 cruel o' me to tak ye awa frae him ? ' " 
 
 "Mag wouldna be ta'en in wi' that; she 
 
110 BOW GAVIN BIB8E PUT IT TO MAG LOWNIE. 
 
 wasiiaborn on a Sawbath," said Jess, using one 
 of her favorite sayings. 
 
 " She wasna," answered Tammas. " Says 
 she, ' Hae nae fear on that score, Gavin ; my 
 father's fine willin' to spare me ! ' " 
 
 " An' that ended it ? " 
 
 " Ay, that ended it." 
 
 " Did ye tak it doon in writin' ? " asked 
 Hendry. 
 
 " There was nae need," said Tammas, hand- 
 ing round his snuff-mull. " No, I never 
 touched paper. When I saw the thing was 
 settled I left them to their coortin'. They're 
 to tak a look at Snecky Hobart's auld hoose 
 the nicht. It's to let." 
 
LIFE IN A COUNTRY MANSE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 JANET. 
 
 Up here among the heather (or nearly so) 
 we are, in the opinion o£ tourists, a mere ham- 
 let, though to ourselves we are at least a 
 village. Englishmen call us a " clachan " — 
 though, truth to tell, we are not sure what 
 that is. Just as Gulliver could not see the 
 Lilliputians without stooping, these tourists 
 may be looking for the clachan when they 
 are in the middle of it, and knocking at one 
 of its doors to ask how far they have yet to go 
 tin they reach it. To be honest, we are only 
 five houses in a row (including the smiddy), 
 with a Free Church manse and a few farms 
 here and there on the hillsides. 
 
112 LIFE IN A COUNTRY MANSE. 
 
 So far as the rest of the world is concerned, 
 we are blotted out with the first fall of snow. 
 I suppose tourists scarcely give us a thought 
 save when they are here. I have heard them 
 admiring our glen in August, and adding : 
 
 " But what a place it must be in winter ! " 
 
 To this their friends reply, shivering : 
 
 " A hard life, indeed ! " 
 
 And the conversation ends with the com- 
 ment : 
 
 " Don't call it life ; it is merely existence." 
 
 Well, it would be dull, no doubt, for tourists 
 up here in January, say, but I find the winter 
 a pleasant change from summer. I am the 
 minister, and though my heart sank when I 
 was " called," I rather enjoy the life now. I 
 am the man whom the tourists pity most. 
 
 " The others drawl through their lives," 
 these tourists say, " to the manner born ; but 
 think of an educated man who has seen life 
 spending his winters in such a place ! " 
 
 " He can have no society." 
 
 "Let us hope the poor fellow is married." 
 
 "Oh, he is sure to be. But, married or 
 single, I am certain I would go mad if I were 
 in his shoes." 
 
LIFE IN A COUNTRY MANSE. 113 
 
 Their comparison is thrown away. I am 
 strong and hale. I enjoy the biting air, and I 
 seldom carry an umbrella. I should perhaps 
 go mad if I were in the Englishmen's shoes, 
 glued to a stool all day, and feeling my road 
 home through fog at night. And there is 
 many an educated man who envies me. Did 
 not three times as many probationers apply for 
 a hearing when the church was vacant as 
 could possibly be heard ? 
 
 But how do I occupy my time ? the English 
 gentlemen would say, if they had not forgotten 
 me. What do the people do in winter ? 
 True, I don't lie long in the mornings and 
 doze on the sofa in the afternoon, and go to 
 bed at one o'clock. When I was at CoUege, 
 where I saw much " Hfe," I breakfasted fre- 
 quently at ten; but here, where time must 
 (they say) hang heavy on my hands, I am up 
 at seven. Though I am not a married man, 
 no one has said openly that I am insane. 
 Janet, my housekeeper and servant, has my 
 breakfast of porridge and tea and ham ready 
 by half-past seven sharp. You see the morn- 
 ings are keen, and so, as I have no bedroom 
 fire nor hot water, I dress much more quickly 
 
114 LIFE IN A COUNTRY MANSE. 
 
 than I dressed at College. Six minutes I give 
 myself, thatn Janet and I have prayers, and 
 then follows my hreakfast. What an appetite 
 I have ! I am amazed to recall the student 
 days, when I " could not look at porridge," 
 and thought a halfpenny roll sufficient for two 
 of us. 
 
 Dreary pleasure, you say, breakfasting alone 
 in a half-furnished house, with the snow lying 
 some feet deep outside and still monotonously 
 falling. Do I forget the sound of my own 
 voice between Monday and Saturday ? I should 
 think not. Nor do I forget Janet's voice. I 
 have read somewhere that the Scotch are a very 
 taciturn race, but Janet is far more Scotch than 
 the haggis that is passed round at some London 
 dinners, and Janet is not a silent woman. The 
 difficulty with some servants is to get them to 
 answer your summons, but my difficulty with 
 Janet is to get her back to the kitchen. Her 
 favorite position is at the door, which she keeps 
 half open. One of her feet she twists round 
 it, and there she stands, half out of the room 
 and half in it. She has a good deal of gossip 
 to tell me about those five houses that lie low, 
 two hundred yards from the manse, and it must 
 
LIFE IN A COUNTRY MANSE. 115 
 
 be admitted that I listen. Why not ? If one 
 is interested in people he must gossip about 
 them. You, in London, may not care in the 
 least who your next door neighbor is, but you 
 gossip about your brothers and sisters and 
 aunts. Well, my people are as familiar to me 
 as your brothers are to you, and, therefore, I 
 say, " Ah, indeed," when told that the smith is 
 busy with the wheel of a certain farmer's cart, 
 and " Dear me, is that so ? " when Janet ex- 
 plains that William, the ploughman, has got 
 Meggy, his wife, to cut his hair. Meggy has 
 cut my own hair. She puts a bowl on my head 
 and clips away everything that it does not cover. 
 So I would miss Janet if she were gone, and her 
 tongue is as enUvening as a strong ticking clock. 
 No doubt there are times when, if I were not a 
 minister, I might fling something soft at her. 
 She shows to least advantage when I have 
 visitors, and even in winter I have a man to 
 dinner now and again. Then I realize that 
 Janet does not know her place. While we are 
 dining she hovers in the vicinity. If she is not 
 pretending to put the room to rights, she is in 
 her fortified position at the door ; and r£ she is 
 not at the door she is immediately behind it. 
 
116 LIFE IN A COUNTRY MANSE. 
 
 Her passion is to help in the conversation. 
 As she brings in the potatoes she answers the 
 last remark my guest addressed to me, and if 
 I am too quick for her she explains away my' 
 answer, or modifies it, or signifies her approval 
 of it. Then I try to be dignified, and to show 
 Janet her place. If I catch her eye I frown, 
 but such opportunities are rare, for it is the 
 guest on whom she concentrates herself. She 
 even tells him, in my presence, little things 
 about myself which I would prefer to keef) to 
 myself. The impression conveyed by her is 
 that I confide everything to her. When my 
 guest remarks that I am becoming a hardened 
 bachelor, and I hint that it is because the 
 ladies do not give me a chance, Janet breaks 
 in with 
 
 " Oh, 'deed it's a wonder he wasn't married 
 long since, but the one he wanted wouldn't have 
 him, and the ones that want him he won't take. 
 He's an ill man to please." 
 
 " Ah, Janet," the guest may say (for he 
 enjoys her interference more than I do), " you 
 make him so comfortable that you spoil him." 
 
 " Maybe," says Janet, " but it took me years 
 to learn how to manage him." 
 
LIFE IX A COUNTRY MANSE. 117 
 
 " Does he need to be managed ? " 
 " I never knew a man that didna." 
 Then they get Janet to tell them all my 
 Httle " tantrums " (as she caUs them), and she 
 holds forth on my habit of mislaying my hat 
 and then blaming her, or on how I hate rice 
 pudding, or on the way I have worn the carpet 
 by walking up and down the floor when I would 
 be more comfortable in a chair. Now and 
 again I have wound myself up to the point of 
 reproving Janet when the guest had gone, but 
 the result is that she tells her select friends 
 how " quick in the temper "• I am. .So Janet 
 must remain as she has grown, and it is gratify- 
 ing to me (though I don't let on) to know that 
 she turns up her nose at every other minister 
 who preaches in my church. Janet is always 
 afraid when I go off for a hoUday that the con- 
 gregations in the big towns will " snap me up." 
 It is pleasant to feel that she has this opinion of 
 me, though I know that the large congregations 
 do not share it. 
 
 Who are my winter visitors ? The chief of 
 them is the doctor. We have no doctor, of 
 course, up here, and this one has to come twelve 
 miles to us. He is rather melancholy when we 
 
118 LIFE IN A COUNTRY MANSE. 
 
 send for him ; but he wastes no time in coming, 
 though he may not have had his clothes off for 
 twenty-four hours, and is well aware that we 
 cannot pay big fees. Several times he has had 
 to remain with me all night, and once he was 
 snowed up here for a week. At times, too, he 
 drives so far on his way to us and then has to 
 turn back because the gig sticks on the heavy 
 roads. He is only a doctor in a small country 
 town, but I am elated when I see him, for he 
 can tell me whether the Government is still in 
 power. Then I have the school inspector once 
 a year. The school inspector is always threaten- 
 ing to change the date of inspection to summer, 
 but he takes the town from which the doctor 
 comes in early spring, and finds it convenient 
 to come from there to here. Early spring is 
 often winter with us, so that the school inspector 
 comes when there is usually snow on the ground 
 or threatening. The school is a mile away at 
 another "clachan," but the inspector dines with 
 me, and so does the schoolmaster. On these 
 occasions the schoolmaster is not such good 
 company as at other times, for he is anxious 
 about his passes, and explains (as I think) more 
 than is necessary that regular attendance is out 
 
LIFE IN A COUNTRY MANSE. 119 
 
 of the question in a place like this. The 
 inspector's visit is the time of my great annual 
 poHtical debate, for the doctor calls politics 
 " fudge." The inspector and I are on different 
 sides, however, and we go at each other hammer 
 and tongs, while the schoolmaster signs to me 
 (with his foot) not to anger the inspector. 
 
 Of course, outsiders will look incredulous 
 when I assure them that a good deal of time is 
 passed in preparing my sermons. I have only 
 one Sabbath service, but two sermons, the one 
 beginning as soon as the other is finished. In 
 such a little church, you will say, they must be 
 easily pleased ; but they are not. Some of 
 them tramp long distances to church in weather 
 that would keep you, reader, in the house, 
 though your church is round the corner and 
 there is pavement aU the way to it. I can 
 preach old sermons ? Indeed I cannot. Many 
 of my hearers adjourn to one of the five houses 
 when the service is over, and there I am picked 
 pretty clean. They would detect an old sermon 
 at once, and resent it. I do not " talk " to 
 them from the pulpit. I write my sermons in 
 the manse, and though I use " paper," the less 
 I use it the better they are pleased. 
 
120 LIFE IN A COUNTRY MANSE. 
 
 The visits of the doctor are pleasant to me in 
 one sense, but painful in others, for I need not 
 say that when he is called I am required too. 
 To wade through miles of snow is no great 
 hardship to those who are accustomed to it ; 
 but the heavy heart comes when one of my 
 people is seriously ill. Up here we have few 
 slight illnesses. The doctor cannot be sum- 
 moned to attend them, and we usually " fight 
 away" until the malady has a hea^-y hold. 
 Then the doctor comes, and though we are so 
 scattered, his judgment is soon known all 
 through the glens. When the tourists come 
 back in summer they will not see all the 
 " natives " of the year before. 
 
 It is said by those who know nothing of our 
 lives that we have no social events worth speak- 
 ing of, and no amusements. This is what 
 ignorance brings ousiders to. I had a marriage 
 last week that was probably more exciting than 
 many of your grand affairs in London. And 
 as for amusements, you should see us gathered 
 together in the smiddy, and sometimes in the 
 schooi-house. But I must break off here, for 
 the reason that I have used up all my spare 
 sermon paper — a serious matter. I shall send 
 
LIFE ISr A COUNTRY MANSE. 121 
 
 the editor something about our social gather- 
 ings presently, for he says he wants it. Janet, 
 I may add, has discovered that this is not a 
 sermon, and is very curious about it. 
 
122 LIFE IN A COUNTRY MANSE. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Janet's curiosity. 
 
 I HAD no intention of saying anything more 
 about our " clachan," but since I posted my two 
 last letters Janet has been so miserable, entirely 
 owing to her reprehensible inquisitiveness, that 
 I have been quite uncomfortable in the manse. 
 If this is printed, as a kind of postscript to what 
 I wrote before, I shall read it aloud to Janet, 
 and so, I hope, humiliate her. 
 
 I hinted that Janet could not discover why 
 I was writing so much. At first she thought I 
 was at sermons, but very soon she decided 
 against this theory. Without blushing — ^the 
 woman cannot blush — she -would look over my 
 shoulder and gaze at the paper ; but that helped 
 her not a jot, for Janet cannot read what she 
 caUs " wrote hand." 
 
 " Ay, Janet," I would say to her when I 
 looked behind me and found her eyes on the 
 paper, " and how do you like it ? " 
 
LIFE IN A COUNTRY MASSE. 123 
 
 " 'Deed," she would reply, " I dinna like it 
 at all, and I think you would be better em- 
 ployed attending to your duties." 
 
 " How do you know I am not at this mo- 
 ment attending to my duties ? " 
 
 '• Very well ; I canna read your wrote hand, 
 but I see it's not a sermon you're at." 
 
 I was curious to know how Janet had dis- 
 covered this, and pressed her. 
 
 '■' You scrawl your sermons, for one thing," 
 said Janet, '• and that is wrote plainer." 
 
 "And for another?" 
 
 " Well, for another I've seen you smiling to 
 yourself when you were writing, and there's 
 nothing to smile at in your sermons." 
 
 " Any more reasons ? " 
 
 " Yes, there's this. When I came in yester- 
 day and told you your supper was ready you 
 wrote on for half an hour, so that I had to put 
 your porridge in the oven to warm. You're 
 very willing to come to your supper when it's 
 just a sermon you re at." 
 
 This, of course, is utterly untrue, and I told 
 Janet to leave the room, which she did, banging 
 the door. 
 
 Janet thought it out doubtless in the kitchen, 
 
124 LIFE IN A COUNTRY MANSE. 
 
 and her next idea was that I was to be called 
 to Aberdeen. I had been in Aberdeen just be- 
 fore the winter came on, and she decided that 
 I was writing out my testimonials. It is not, 
 however, Janet's way to question me boldly on 
 any matter that she thinks I want to keep 
 secret. If she had asked me whether I was ex- 
 pecting to be called away I would have told 
 her the truth, but what she did was this. She 
 "stepped down " to the smiddy, and informed 
 the smith's wife that I had received a call from 
 Aberdeen. Janet thinks she has an of&cial 
 connection with the Free Church because she 
 is my housekeeper, and she likes to be first in 
 the field with church news. It is wormwood 
 to her to discover that the elders have been 
 told anything by me which I have not first told 
 her, and so she is constantly forming absurd 
 conclusions, and announcing them as facts. 
 Of course, the smith's wife told her neighbors 
 that I had a call to Aberdeen, and soon the 
 glen was discussing nothing else. The session 
 came to the manse to hear all about it, and I 
 had to tell them that the story was only another 
 of Janet's foolish notions. I was very angry 
 with Janet, but she was not in the least ashamed 
 
LIFE IN A COUNTRY MANSE. 125 
 
 of herself. If I had not got a call, who was I 
 writing these letters to? she asked herself. 
 Her next decision was that I was to be married. 
 This enraged her. The fact that I posted the 
 letters myself struck her as proof positive. Of 
 course, I only posted them because I knew that 
 if I gave them to her she would get some one 
 to read the address. 
 
 This time Janet kept her suspicions to herself, 
 leading me, however, to understand that I was 
 behaving very foolishly. 
 
 " You'll have been hearing," she would say, 
 " that the schoolmaster and his wife are getting 
 on very ill ? " 
 
 " On the contrary, I understand that they 
 are very happy." 
 
 " Some folk have queer ideas of happiness, 
 but I would not be happy if I was a school- 
 master, and my wife flung the tongs at me." 
 
 " Tuts, tuts, Janet, that never happened at 
 the school-house." 
 
 " Did it not ? " said Janet. " You can see 
 the mark of the tongs on his brow." 
 
 Then Janet would look sideways at me, and 
 say artfully : 
 ' " She's an Aberdeen woman." 
 
120 LIFE IN A COUNTRY MANSE. 
 
 " So I believe." 
 
 " Ay, the Aberdeen lassies is sly." 
 
 " What makes you think that ? " 
 
 "It's well known. I've often heard them 
 that kens say that you can just be sure of one 
 thing about Aberdeen lassies." 
 
 " And what is that ? " 
 
 " That they're the very opposite of what they 
 pretend to be." 
 
 With this shot Janet would retire, but soon 
 she would return to the subject. 
 
 " I hear thae Aberdeen lassies try terrible 
 hard to snap up the students." 
 
 "Do they?" 
 
 " They do, and they have ruined many a prom- 
 ising man — especially ministers." 
 
 " But many a minister is married without 
 being ruined." 
 
 " Not to an Aberdeen lassie. These Ummers 
 are no' brought up to mak' housekeepers, but 
 just to show off. They can play on the piano, 
 and that's about all they're fit for. They 
 would disgrace a manse, leastwise a country 
 manse." 
 
 " They would have had no chance with you, 
 Janet, if you had been a man." 
 
LIFE IN A COUNTRY MANSE. 127 
 
 " They wouldna ; but some folk are no' dif- 
 ficult to get round, and ministers are easily 
 wheedled." 
 
 " You don't think me easily wheedled, do 
 you?" 
 
 " 'Deed there's no saying." 
 
 " But if I had been so weiik I would have 
 fallen a victim to their wiles long ago." 
 
 " I dinna ken about that. It's said there's 
 no fule Uke an old fule." 
 
 " Do you mean to call me old ? " 
 
 " Oh, you're no' that young now." 
 
 " What makes you talk so much about mar- 
 riage nowadays, Janet?" 
 
 " I have een, and can use them. When I 
 see you writing letters by the hour I ken what 
 it means." 
 
 " But if I'm writing to a lady, why does 
 she not write to me ? " 
 
 " That's what puzzles me, but no doubt 
 she's sly. She kens what she's about. I 
 daresay she has another lad she would rather 
 have, and she's just keeping you dangUng on, 
 in case he refuses her." 
 
 "Refuses her, Janet? The woman, as you 
 surely know, does not propose to the man." 
 
128 LIFE IN A COUNTRY MANSE. 
 
 " I'm thinking she does a hantle times often- 
 er than the men have any idea of. Ye may 
 laugh, but I ken women — especially these 
 Aberdeen hussies." 
 
 ' " Why, you never were within seventy mdes 
 of Aberdeen in your life." 
 
 " Maybe no, but I ken what fules these 
 women mak' of ministers. Yes, and I ken 
 how the ministers repents when it's too late. 
 You admire these dressed-up dolls' grand 
 clothes, but I'm thinking you sing a different 
 tune when you have to pay for them. The 
 piano's a pretty instrument, but you think less 
 of it when you're hungry and the broth pot's 
 fuU of soot." 
 
 " But, Janet, the Aberdeen lassie would 
 keep a servant to look after the broth pot." 
 
 " And a pretty-like servant, I'm thinking. 
 These limmers of stuck-up wives dinna like to 
 have a respectable middle-aged woman in the 
 kitchen like " 
 
 " Like yourself ? " 
 
 " Yes, like myself. Oh, no ; they bring 
 some useless fule o£ a lassie with them that 
 they think genteel-looking. Yes, she can 
 wear a neat cap (and set it at every single man 
 
LIFE IN A COUNTBY MANSE. 129 
 
 in the kirk) ; but as for work, she kens noth- 
 ing about it. All she's fit for is for combing 
 her mistress's false hair and burning the 
 potatoes." 
 
 " Hoots, Janet, you were young once your- 
 self." 
 
 " Oh, you're an infatuated man, and will 
 not listen to reason. But let me teU you this, 
 that folk haver when they say a minister is 
 better looked after when he's married. That's 
 a story invented by young women. When 
 you have ministers preaching j^ihere, do you 
 think I need to speir whether they're married 
 or single ? No, I ken from one look at them. 
 If they're sensible single men with a decent 
 body to look after them, their boots is in good 
 order and their coats well brushed. But I 
 detect the married man at once by his want of 
 buttons and his boots worn down at the heel, 
 and the seams of his sleeves open. Yes, and 
 I ken him by his want of spirit. However, as 
 I say, willful man maun have his say, and I 
 will not argiie with you." 
 
 Then one day Janet found out that my letters 
 had been addressed to a newspaper office, and 
 immediately she had a new idea. I was adver- 
 
130 LIFE IN A COUNTRY MANSE. 
 
 tising for another housekeeper. This was too 
 terrible, and she could beat about the bush no 
 longer. She walked into the manse parlor, 
 and said: 
 
 " I dinna ken what I've done to make you 
 treat me so secret-like, but I want to hear the 
 worst." 
 
 " What are you talking about, Janet ? " I 
 asked, innocently. 
 
 " Are you to be married ? " demanded 
 Janet. 
 
 " Certainly not," I answered. " No one 
 will have me." 
 
 " Then it's a new servant?" 
 
 " What is a new servant ? " 
 
 " That you're advertising for." 
 
 " Did I say I was advertising ? " 
 
 " Tell me the worst, I can hear it." 
 
 " Janet," I said, severely, " your curiosity 
 will bring you to an early grave if you don't 
 restrain it. It is no affair of yours what I 
 have been writing, and therefore I shall not 
 answer your questions. You have brought all 
 your misery on yourself." 
 
 So Janet is stiU wondering what the writing 
 is about, but I won't tell her till the paper 
 
LIFE IN A COUNTRY MANSE. 131 
 
 arrives. Then I shall read this aloud to her, 
 and add certain moral reflections which will 
 cow her for a day or two, though they would 
 not interest the public. 
 
132 LIFE IM A COUNTRY MANSE. 
 
 CHAPTER m. 
 
 TEACHER m'qTJBEN. 
 
 As I tried to show some time ago, my old 
 manse housekeeper, Janet, takes a personal in- 
 terest in my affairs. In certain matters she has 
 me under complete subjection ; for instance, I 
 dare not smoke (except in company) in my black 
 coat, and it is the worse for me if I forget to 
 change my socks on the days which she has, as 
 it were, set apart for that purpose. So far she 
 has allowed me to compose my own sermons, 
 but I have visions of a time when she will insist 
 on telling me what to say in the pulpit, as well 
 as how to say it. Nay, more. Teacher M'Queen 
 declared at the smiddy the other night that 
 when I grew old and weak in intellect (Janet, 
 who dislikes him, says that he said " weaker in 
 intellect") my housekeeper would propose to 
 me, and we would be " kirked " before I had 
 
LIFE IN A COUNTRY MANSE. 133 
 
 courage to enter a protest. This prediction I 
 openly flout, while admitting Janet's power in 
 the manse. This chapter in our " clachan " 
 life, indeed, is written at her instigation. At 
 first when she discovered that I had become an 
 author she was contemptuous, and her sneers 
 on the subject made me uncomfortable. About 
 a month ago, however, Janet began to look upon 
 authorship in a new light. There are several 
 persons in the glen whom she never passes, 
 even on the Sabbath, without flinging her head 
 so far back that she can see what is taking 
 place behind her. One of these is Teacher 
 M' Queen, and it has struck Janet that I might 
 make the old dominie more humble if I " showed 
 him up in the newspapers." 
 
 " Of which he has great need," Janet fre- 
 quently reminds me. 
 
 " I can show him his errors from the pulpit," 
 I tell her. 
 
 " You can," says Janet, " and when you're 
 done he wakes up." 
 
 Teacher M'Queen does not sleep in church, 
 but Janet scorns him, and therefore insists that 
 he does. Janet watches the congregation so 
 sharply that she has no time to pay much atten- 
 
134 LIFH IN A COUNTBT MANSE. 
 
 tion to the sermon. When this is pointed out 
 to her she says : 
 
 " I have the minister six days a week, and 
 so I can surely take my een off him on the 
 Sabbath." 
 
 However, I must leave Janet (whom I seem 
 to have on the brain) and come to Teacher 
 M'Queen. Nevertheless, I would have it first 
 understood that I mean to sketch the dominie 
 as I know him, not as he is conceived by Janet. 
 
 M'Queen has never been a schoolmaster here 
 in my time. It will be six years in June since 
 I came to the glen, and he had retired on a 
 pension two years before that. He was a 
 teacher in the glen (as he teUs me every time 
 we quarrel about whitewashing the session- 
 house) " long before I was born," and he is 
 still so hale that he might venture to add that 
 he will still be a resident here long after I am 
 dead. They say that he and the inspector once 
 nearly came to blows about a vulgar fraction, 
 but as a rule, I fancy, he was sly rather than 
 combative on the days of the examination, and 
 there are queer stories (told by former pupUs) 
 of what he did behind the inspector's back. 
 The grand ambition of the inspector was to get 
 
LIFE IN A COUNTBY MANSE. 135 
 
 him to retire, which he did, after thinking the 
 matter over for six years. His great subject of 
 conversation at the social board had always 
 been the glories of life in Aberdeen, for he 
 despised what he called the "stagnation" of 
 the glen, and would frequently say to our 
 farmers, or to the smith : 
 
 " The like of you can have no notion of the 
 sublime thoughts that fill the brain of an 
 educated man. Therefore, what do you mean 
 by presuming to argue with me ? " 
 
 Of course, when he decided to retire on a 
 pension, the universal opinion was that he would 
 spend his last days in his beloved Aberdeen. I 
 believe the glen folk were grieved to think that 
 he would be known to them no more ; for 
 though he was and is a cantankerous man, it 
 is impossible to Uve for years in intimacy with 
 any one without discovering some good in him. 
 The dominie had been an indefatigable teacher, 
 and had done numerous kind-hearted things, 
 though not, it must be admitted, in a gracious 
 manner. A number of his old pupils raUied 
 round him when he retired, and there was a 
 social gathering given in his honor at the new 
 school-house. An English village school could 
 
136 LIFE IN A COUNTRY MANSE. 
 
 not, I think, make such a display, for even up 
 in our Kttle glen boys are ambitious of learning, 
 and there were three ministers and an advocate 
 (aU former pupils) at the gathering. Several 
 other pupils, who had risen to what m the glen 
 is called fame, were unable to be present, but 
 they sent their good wishes and a subscription 
 to the present. The present to the dominie 
 consisted of " a purse and sovereigns," but I 
 never heard how many sovereigns were in the 
 purse. Perhaps this is one of the things best 
 kept dark. 
 
 Then when the presentation was over, and 
 the speeches and the tea run down, nearly the 
 whole glen shook hands with Teacher M' Queen, 
 and wished him happy days in Aberdeen. 
 
 " Thank you kindly," he replied a fecore of 
 times, " but I may see you again before I go, as 
 I've taken lodgiags with the smith for a week. 
 You see, I have some things to do before I can 
 start." 
 
 So the dominie spoke ; but the week went 
 by, and another week, and then another, and 
 he was stiU at the smith's. When questioned 
 as to when he meant to leave, he continued to 
 say: 
 
LIFE IN A COUNTRY MANSE. 137 
 
 " Oh, in a few days. You see I have some 
 things to do before I can start." 
 
 One of the things the dominie had to do was 
 to give up his eldership, and this took a long 
 time. I had the story from my predecessor. 
 
 "M'Queen used to come up to the manse," 
 Mr. Marr told me, " and explain that as he was 
 going to Aberdeen, he would have to give up 
 his eldership. Then he would sigh, and say, 
 ' You'll get the session-house whitewashed when 
 I'm away ; ' and I would reply, ' Well, it needs 
 to be whitewashed, and I could never under- 
 stand why you were so much opposed to white- 
 washing it.' ' Ah,' he would answer, ' you see 
 James White and I never got on well, and 
 James was for the whitewashing, and so I was 
 bound to go against it. I'U hardly sleep at 
 nights at Aberdeen, for I'll always be thinking 
 James has got his way.' Then when he rose 
 to go (I always let him out myself, because 
 Janet and he used to put up their backs at each 
 other) I would say, ' So I am to understand 
 that you have resigned your eldership ? ' and 
 he would answer, 'Well, it must come to 
 that, but I think I'U put off resigning for 
 another week, as I'm not just leaving yet, 
 
138 LIFE IN A COUNTRY MANSE. 
 
 there being some things I must do before I 
 can start.' " 
 
 At the smiddy the dominie spoke for a time 
 of the glories of Aberdeen. He had been born 
 there, and educated at the University, and there 
 was a gleam in his eye when he talked of the 
 old college, and of the smell of the sea. But 
 when he was asked whether he had many friends 
 in Aberdeen now, he became silent, and went 
 out alone. His feet took him in the direction 
 of his old school, a miserable little building that 
 was falling to pieces even before the new school 
 was built. Even to this day it is toward the old 
 school that Teacher M' Queen wanders, and I 
 have heard it said that sometimes as he strides 
 along the path, he forgets that the school is no 
 longer in use, and that his own working days 
 are done. He has been seen stopping short at 
 the doorway of the old school (the door is gone), 
 and looking around him as if for his ragged 
 scholars, or listening for the sound of them at 
 play. Then he looks straight before him for 
 a time, and speaks to himself, after which he 
 returns to the smith's and says that he has 
 decided to set off for Aberdeen on Saturday. 
 But Saturday passes, and stiU there is some- 
 
LIFE IN A COUNTRY MANSE. 139 
 
 thing to be done before Teacher M'Queen can 
 start. 
 
 I think the dominie had been fully six months 
 in his quarters with the smith before he ceased 
 to talk of going to Aberdeen next week. Then 
 he admitted that the winter was too far advanced. 
 
 " The east winds are trying in Aberdeen," 
 he allowed, " and it would scarcely be safe to 
 make the change from here to there in midwinter. 
 But I'll go in spring." 
 
 Sprmg came, and the dominie was still in no 
 hurry to go. 
 
 "I'll wait till summer, when the days are 
 long," he said. 
 
 Then winter came again. 
 
 I suppose he did mean to go to Aberdeen at 
 some time. There is something rather pathetic 
 in this. AU his life he had looked forward to 
 returning to Aberdeen, and passing his last 
 years in it. When he was a youth he had no 
 thought, we may be sure, of being a dominie 
 in an insignificant glen during all the working 
 years of his Hfe. He came to the glen strong 
 in the belief that very soon he would get a 
 better place, perhaps in the famous grammar 
 school of Aberdeen itself. Everything he saw 
 
140 LIFE IN A COUNTRY MANSE. 
 
 here he compared scornfully to what he had 
 seen in Aberdeen. He would not allow that 
 the sun shone here as it did there ; and the 
 Aberdeen people excelled all others. His rela- 
 tives lived in Aberdeen, but they died before 
 the dominie had a chance of returning perma- 
 nently to it. He had a love-story, too, as I sup- 
 pose all men have, and the scene of it was Aber^ 
 deen. I don't know why it came to nothing, 
 for on that subject the dominie, even in his 
 loquacious hours, shuts his mouth. 
 
 He discovered, but tried to put the discovery 
 from him as something distasteful, that Aber- 
 deen no longer contained a friend of his. He 
 might have left the glen for it, but though 
 many persons in the glen would have seen him 
 on the coach, there was no one to meet him at 
 Aberdeen station. All his hfe he had thought 
 of Aberdeen as his real home, yet during this 
 time he was making a new home in the glen. 
 It would have been death for him to leave us. 
 In the glen he is somebody, but Aberdeen 
 buried biTn decades ago. 
 
 So the dominie remains with us, and here he 
 will end his days. In the glen he is stiU Teacher 
 M'Queen, while the present schoolmaster is only 
 
l:ti: IX a corsir.r mjlXsi:. 141 
 
 Mr. Kowand. Mr. Marr -wTent the ^ray of all 
 the eartli s^ime ye^irs airo. but still Teacher 
 M'Queen is an elder in the church, siill Janet 
 and he shake their heacb at each otiier, and he 
 i> siiH violent in his opposition to the \rhite- 
 "washing of the session-house. 
 
142 LIF£: JJSf A COUNTRY MANSE. 
 
 CHAPTER rv. 
 
 THE POST. 
 
 When a carriage is going one way along our 
 glen road, and the post's bicycle is coming the 
 other way, there is an anxious moment for the 
 persons in the carriage. They will squeeze 
 their vehicle, if they are wise, into a recess, but 
 even then the bicycle may charge into it, for 
 the post's " machine " is more like a restive 
 horse than a thing of wheels, and, except when 
 there is a brae to climb, it is constantly running 
 away with him. It used to bach in the middle 
 of braes and whirl him down the way he had 
 come, much like a canoe trying to ascend a 
 rush of water and giving up the contest when 
 near the top. Now, however, the post is more 
 cautious. When he comes to a brae he jumps 
 (and falls) from his velocipede, as he calls it, 
 and drags it up the hill. When he is tired of 
 
LIFE IN A COUNTRY MANSE. 14ii 
 
 dragging, he pushes. It has been noticed of 
 our glen that it is all climbing. The road the 
 post has to go is more likfe a switchback railway 
 than anything else, so that he is oftener o£E 
 his velocipede than on it. To the calm out- 
 sider the machine doubles his daily work, yet 
 it is the one thing in this world he is proud o£. 
 He is a lanky man, with hair that the wind 
 blows across his eyes, and his age is uncertain. 
 He thinks he must be sixty, but some in the 
 glen say he is seventy. Every day he has some 
 eighteen miles to walk (or " cycle "), but we do 
 not consider this astounding, there being several 
 men of threescore-and-ten in the glen who can 
 still walk their thirty miles on occasion. One 
 of them, indeed, can even fish after it. How- 
 ever, John had set his heart on a velocipede, 
 and two years ago a subscription was started to 
 enable him to buy a second-hand one. Nearly 
 twelve shillings were gathered in a single even- 
 ing at the school-house for this purpose^ the 
 teacher having got up a concert (at which I 
 read Mr. Stanley's account of how he found Liv- 
 ingstone — ^though the hit of the evening was 
 made by our comic singer). After the money 
 had been presented to the post, he changed his 
 
144 LIFE IN A COUNTRY MANSE. 
 
 mind about the bicycle and bought a fiddle, to 
 the great indignation of the subscribers. He 
 showed considerable canniness when taken to 
 task. 
 
 " How have I cheated you ? " he asked the 
 smith's wife. 
 
 " We gave money to let you buy a velocipede, 
 and you've bought a fiddle. That's how you've 
 cheated us." 
 
 " No, Mary, you misjudge me. In the testi- 
 monial I got with the siUer, it said that the 
 money was raised in recognition of my long 
 and valuable services." 
 
 " Yes, and to let you buy a velocipede." 
 
 " There's not a word about a velocipede." 
 
 " Maybe it's called a hi — bicycle, but that's 
 the same thing." 
 
 "It's hardly the same thing, but I assure you 
 bicycles are no mentioned any more than veloci- 
 pedes." 
 
 " Havers ! did I no hear the testimonial read 
 out ? " 
 
 " You did ; and I can repeat it to you by 
 heart, for often I say it to myselE when stand- 
 ing beneath a tree till the rain stops. The 
 words you're thinking of are as follows : — 
 
> LIFE IN A COUNTRY MANSE. 145 
 
 ' This gift is raised to enable him to buy some- 
 thing that will make his journeys easier.' " 
 
 "• And surely that means a velocipede ? " 
 
 " I don't see but what it might mean a fiddle. 
 The roads don't seem so long if you have music 
 to brighten them." 
 
 " Well aware you are that these words were 
 just put in because the dominie's heart failed 
 him at the word ' velocipede,' he no being sure 
 how many s's were in it." 
 
 " If that's so," said John, cunningly, " the 
 blame for buying the fiddle should be charged 
 to the dominie." 
 
 It was apparently only to " stop talk " that the 
 post by and by began to construct a velocipede 
 out of his own head. At first he took little 
 interest in the enterprise, perhaps because he 
 was hopeless, but soon he became so enamored 
 of it that he grudged the time spent in deliver- 
 ing letters. My housekeeper wanted me to 
 have him dismissed promptly (Janet thinks 
 the Government would not dare to disobey the 
 orders of a Free Church minister), because one 
 day he said to her : 
 
 " Hie, Janet ; there's twa or three letters 
 for the minister in my bag. You'll better cry 
 
146 LIFE IN A COUNTRY MANSE. 
 
 in at the smith's for them. They're on the 
 mantelpiece." 
 
 " Bring them yourself," said Janet, indig- 
 nantly. 
 
 "I'U try to run up with them," said the 
 audacious post, " before supper time, but I'm 
 terribly busy making my velocipede." 
 
 " Are you paid by the Government for mak- 
 ing velocipedes," demanded Janet, " or for de- 
 livering letters ? " 
 
 " I disdain to argue with a woman," replied 
 John. " Stand out of the light, woman." 
 
 " Woman indeed ! " said Janet, holding her 
 head high. 
 
 John and the smith are only on speaking 
 terms now when the velocipede is broken, which 
 is once a week or so. Then they mend it be- 
 tween them. Their quarrel arose in this way. 
 John began to make his vehicle in his own 
 kitchen, from which he was driven by his wife 
 to a shed that is cold in winter, because it wants 
 half of the roof. Having made a machine here 
 that looked complete when leaning against the 
 side of the shed, but came to pieces if you tried 
 to sit on it, John had to call in the smith, and 
 for a month, the two men were engaged in the 
 
LIFE IN A COUNTRY MANSE. 147 
 
 evenings in giving it finishing touches. They 
 were great friends during this period, and, in- 
 deed, up to the memorable day when the post's 
 steed was first seen by the glen at large. It 
 was so much admired that John felt it to be his 
 duty to himself and the Postmaster-General to 
 claim full credit for the construction. From 
 the same day the smith took to maintaining 
 that he had made the velocipede. 
 
 " The smith lent me some nails and a 
 hammer," John said, " but I made the thing." 
 
 " Him make a bicycle ! " said the smith, 
 scornfully. " I let him hold the nails till I 
 needed them, but I did all the work." 
 
 " A laddie could have done all the smith 
 did," John explained. 
 
 " That's true," retorted the smith, " if a 
 laddie could have made the bicycle." 
 
 So fierce did the controversy run that the 
 smith turned his back when John came clattei^ 
 ing along on his wooden horse. Nevertheless, 
 both love that bicycle, and when anything is 
 wrong with it they rush for hammers and twine. 
 There is a great deal of twiae about the 
 machine, and, when it cuts, the wheels go 
 different ways. 
 
148 LIFE IN A COUNTRY MANSE. 
 
 To describe the post's velocipede is alto- 
 gether beyond my pen. To me it looks like a 
 little cart wheel in chase of a big one, with an 
 excited rider trying to keep them apart. 
 
 " The post's coming ! " some one says at the 
 " clachan," and then mothers dart into the 
 road for their children to save them from death, 
 while terrified hens run this way and that. 
 Then with a cfatter John bears down upon us, 
 shouting : 
 
 " Clear the road there." 
 
 " Stop him," some one cries to John. 
 
 " I canna," says John ; " he's away with me 
 again. Grip him at the back." 
 
 Some bold spirit seizes the little wheel, and 
 is dragged along by the infuriated bicycle until 
 John is able to descend. 
 
 " Bring me a drink of water," he pants. 
 
 But it is not always thus that the post ar- 
 rives. Sometimes he is hours late, and we say : 
 
 " I can't make out why John is so late." 
 
 " He'U have broken down," is suggested 
 next. 
 
 By and by John walks into the hamlet, push- 
 ing his bicycle before him, or laden with various 
 parts of it. 
 
LIFE IN A COUNTS Y MANSE. 149 
 
 " We've had an accident,"- he explains, as if 
 an explanation were necessary. 
 
 Sometimes the post comes to grief as well as 
 his machine, and we have to sally forth to look 
 for him. Once something still more remark- 
 able happened. The bicycle arrived alone. 
 We hurried up the brae, at the foot of which 
 the hamlet hes, and near the top we found 
 John prone in the middle of a wet road. 
 
 "Don't bother about me," he cried, "but 
 help me to find the velocipede. It's bolted." 
 
 I should say that it would be easier to walk 
 forty miles on our roads than to ride five on 
 that demon machine, but the post by no means 
 agrees with me. 
 
 " That velocipede's like a watch," he says, 
 fondly. " So long as I never had one I didn't 
 miss it, but now I couldn't do without it." 
 
150 LIFE IN A COUNTRY MANSE. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 A WEDDING IN THE SMIDDY. 
 
 I PROMISED to take the world at large into 
 my confidence on the subject of our wedding 
 at the smiddy. You in London, no doubt, 
 dress more gorgeously for marriages than we 
 do — though we can present a fine show of color 
 — and you do not make your own wedding-cake, 
 as Lizzie did. But what is your excitement to 
 ours ? I suppose you have many scores of mar- 
 riages for our one, but you only know of those 
 from the newspapers. " At so-and-so, by the 
 Rev. Mr. Such-a-one, John to Elizabeth, eldest 
 daughter of Thomas." That is all you know 
 of the couple who were married round the 
 corner, and therefore, I say, a hundred such 
 weddings are less eventful in your community 
 than one wedding in ours. 
 
 Lizzie is off to Southampton with her has- 
 
LIFE IN A COUNTMr MANSE. 151 
 
 band. As the carriage drove off behind two 
 horses that could with difficulty pull it through 
 the snow, Janet suddenly appeared at my elbow 
 and remarked : 
 
 "Well, well, she has him now, and may she 
 have her joy of him." 
 
 " Ah, Janet," I said, " you see you were 
 wrong. You said he would never come for her." 
 
 "No, no," answered Janet. "I just said 
 Lizzie made too sure about him, seeing as he 
 was at the other side of the world. These 
 sailors are scarce to be trusted." 
 
 " But you see this one has turned up a 
 trump." 
 
 " That remains to be seen. Anybody that's 
 single can marry a woman, but it's no so easy 
 to keep her comfortable." 
 
 I suppose Janet is really glad that the sailor 
 did turn up and claim Lizzie, but she is 
 annoyed in a way too. The fact is that Janet 
 was skeptical about the sailor. I never saw 
 Janet reading anything but the Free Church 
 Monthly, yet she must have obtained her wide 
 knowledge of sailors from books. She con- 
 siders them very bad characters, but is too 
 shrewd to give her reasons. 
 
152 LIFE IN A COUNTRY MANSE. 
 
 "We all ken what sailors are," is her dark 
 way of denouncing those who go down to the 
 sea in ships, and then she shakes her head and 
 purses up her mouth as if she could tell things 
 about sailors that would make our hair rise. 
 
 I think it was in Glasgow that Lizzie met 
 the sailor — three years ago. She had gone 
 there to be a servant, but the size of the place 
 (according to her father) frightened her, and 
 in a few months she was back at the clachan. 
 We were all quite excited to see her again in 
 the church, and the general impression was 
 that Glasgow had " made her a deal more lady- 
 like." In Janet's opinion she was just a little 
 too lady-Uke to be natural. 
 
 In a week's time there was a wild rumor 
 through the glen that Lizzie was to be married. 
 
 " Not she," said Janet, uneasily. 
 
 Soon, however, Janet had to admit that there 
 was truth in the story, for " the way Lizzie 
 wandered up the road looking for the post 
 showed she had a man on her mind." 
 i* Lizzie, I think, wanted to keep her wonder- 
 ful secret to herself, but that could not be 
 done. 
 
 " I canna sleep at nights for wondering who 
 
LIFE IN A COUNTRY MANSE. 153 
 
 Lizzie is to get," Janet admitted to me. So 
 in order to preserve her health. Janet studied 
 the afBair, reflected c ii the kind of people Lizzie 
 was Kkely to meet in Glasgow, asked Lizzie to 
 the manse to tea (with no result), and then 
 asked Lizzie's mother (victory). Lizzie was to 
 be married to a sailor. 
 
 " I'm cheated," said Janet, " if she ever sets 
 eyes on him again. Oh, we all ken what sailors 
 are." 
 
 You must not think Janet too spiteful. 
 Marriages were always too much for her, but 
 after the wedding is over she becomes good- 
 natured again. She is a strange mixture, and, 
 I rather think, very romantic, despite her cyni- 
 cal talk. 
 
 Well, I confess now that for a time I was 
 somewhat afraid of Lizzie's sailor myself. His 
 letters became few in number, and often I saw 
 Lizzie with red eyes after the post had passed. 
 She had too much work to do to allow her to 
 mope, but she became unhappy and showed a 
 want of spirit that alarmed her father, wko 
 liked to shout at his relatives and have them 
 shout back at him. 
 
 " I wish she had never set eyes on that 
 
154 LIFE IN A COUNTRY MANSE. 
 
 sailor," he said to me one day when Lizzie was 
 troubling him. 
 
 " She could have had William Simpson," 
 her mother said to Janet. 
 
 " I question that," said Janet, in repeating 
 the remark to me. 
 
 But though all the clachan shook its head at 
 the sailor, and repeated Janet's aphorism about 
 sailors as a class, Lizzie refused to beheve her 
 lover untrue. 
 
 " The only way to get her to flare up at me," 
 her father said, " is to say a word against her 
 lad. She will not stand that." 
 
 And, after all, we were wrong and Lizzie 
 was right. In the beginning of the winter 
 Janet walked into my study and parlor (she 
 never knocks), and said • 
 
 "He's come!" 
 
 « Who ? " I asked. 
 
 " The sailor. Lizzie's sailor. It's a perfect 
 disgrace." 
 
 " Hoots, Janet, it's the very reverse. I'm 
 dehghted ; and so, I suppose, are you in your 
 heart." 
 
 " I'm not grudging her the man if she wants 
 him," said Janet, flinging up her head, " but 
 
LIFE IN A COUNTRY MANSE. 155 
 
 the disgrace is in the public way he marched 
 past me with his arm round her. It affronted 
 me." 
 
 Janet gave me details. She had been to a 
 farm for the milk and passed Lizzie, who had 
 wandered out to meet the post as usual. 
 
 " I've no letter for ye, Lizzie," the post said, 
 and Lizzie sighed. 
 
 " No, my lass," the post continued, " but 
 I've something better." 
 
 Lizzie was wondering what it could be, when 
 a man jumped out from behind a hedge, at the 
 sight of whom Lizzie screamed with joy. It 
 was her sailor. 
 
 " I would never have let on I was so fond of 
 him," said Janet. 
 
 " But did he not seem fond of her ? " I 
 asked. 
 
 " That was the disgrace," said Janet. " He 
 marched off to her father's house with his arm 
 round her ; yes, passed me and a wheen other 
 folk, and looked as if he neither kent nor cared 
 how public he was making himself. She did 
 not care either." 
 
 I addressed some remarks to Janet on the 
 subject of meddling with other people's affairs, 
 
156 LIFE IN A COUNTRY MANSE. 
 
 pointing out that she was now half an hour 
 late with my tea ; but I, too, was interested to 
 see the sailor. I shall never forget what a 
 change had come over Lizzie when I saw her 
 next. The life was back in her face, she 
 bustled about the house as busy as a bee, and 
 her walk was springy. 
 
 " This is him," she said to me, and then the 
 sailor came forward and grinned. He was 
 usually grinning when I saw him, but he had 
 an honest, open face, if a very youthful one. 
 
 The sailor stayed on at the clachan tiU the 
 marriage, and continued to scandalize Janet by 
 strutting "past the very manse gate" with his 
 arm round the happy Lizzie. 
 
 " He has no notion of the solemnity of mar- 
 riage," Janet informed me, " or he would look 
 less jolly. I would not like a man that joked 
 about his marriage." 
 
 The sailor undoubtedly did joke. He seemed 
 to look on the coming event as the most comi- 
 cal affair in the world's history, and when he 
 spoke of it he slapped his knees and roared. 
 But there was daily fresh evidence that he 
 was devoted to Lizzie. 
 
 The wedding took place in the smiddy, 
 
LIFE IN A COUNTRY MANSE. 157 
 
 because it is a big place, and all the glen was 
 invited. Lizzie Would have had the company 
 comparatively select, but the sailor asked every 
 one to come whom he fell in with, and he had 
 few refusals. He was wonderfully " flush " of 
 money, too, and had not Lizzie taken control 
 of it, would have given it aU away before the 
 marriage took place. 
 
 " It's a mercy Lizzie kens the worth of a 
 bawbee," her mother said, " for he would 
 scatter his siller among the very bairns as if it 
 was corn and he was feeding hens." 
 
 All the chairs in the five houses were not 
 sufficient to seat the guests, but the smith is a 
 handy man, and he made forms by crossing 
 planks on tubs. The smiddy was an amazing 
 sight, lit up with two big lamps, and the bride, 
 let me inform those who tend to scoff, was 
 dressed in white. As for the sailor, we have 
 perhaps never had so showily dressed a gentle- 
 man in our parts. For this occasion he dis- 
 carded his seafaring " rig-out " (as he called it), 
 and appeared resplendent in a black frock coat 
 (tight at the neck), a light blue waistcoat 
 (richly ornamented), and gray trousers with a 
 green stripe. His boots were new and so 
 
158 LIFE IN A COUNTRY MANSE. 
 
 genteel that as the evening wore on he had to 
 kick them off and dance in his stocking soles. 
 
 Janet tells me that Lizzie had gone through 
 the ceremony in private with her sailor a num- 
 ber of times, so that he might make no mistake. 
 The smith, asked to take my place at these 
 rehearsals, declined on the ground that he for- 
 got how the knot was tied ; but his wife had a 
 better memory, and I understand that she even 
 mimicked me — for which I must take her to 
 task one of these days. 
 
 However, despite all these precautions, the 
 sailor was a little demonstrative during the 
 ceremony, and slipped his arm round the bride 
 "to steady her." Janet wonders that Lizzie 
 did not fling his arms from her, but Lizzie was 
 too nervous now to know what her swain was 
 about. 
 
 Then came the supper and the songs and 
 the speeches. The tourists who picture us 
 shivering, silent, and depressed aU through the 
 winter should have been in the smiddy that 
 night. 
 
 I proposed the health of the young couple, 
 and when I called Lizzie by her new name, 
 " Mrs. Fairweather," the sailor flung back his 
 
LIFE IN A COUNTRY MANSE. 159 
 
 head and roared with glee till he choked, and 
 Lizzie's first duty as a wife was to hit him hard 
 between the shoulder blades. When he was 
 sufficiently composed to reply, he rose to his 
 feet and grinned round the room. 
 
 " Mrs. Fairweather," he cried in an ecstasy 
 of deHght and again choked. 
 
 The smith induced him to make another at- 
 tempt, and this time he got as far as " Ladies 
 and gentlemen, me and my wife — " when 
 the speech ended prematurely in resounding 
 chuckles. The last we saw of him, when the 
 carriage drove away, he was still grinning ; 
 but that, as he explained, was because " he 
 had got Lizzie at last." " You'll be a good 
 husband to her, I hope," I said. 
 
 " Will I not ! " he cried, and his arm went 
 round his wife again. 
 
DITE DEUCHARS. 
 
 Woia)BB.FUL is the variety of pleasures in 
 Thrums. One has no sooner unyoked from his 
 loom than something exhilarating happens. In 
 the same hour I have known a barn go on fire 
 in the Marywellbrae, a merriment caravan stick 
 on the Brig of the Kelpies, and a lord dine in 
 the Quharity Arms parlor, the view of which 
 is commanded from the top of Hookey Crewe's 
 dyke. To see everything worth seeing is 
 impossible, simply because the days are not 
 thirty-six hours long. Most of us, however, 
 see our fill, Dite Deuchars being the strange 
 exception. 
 
 A bad boy had flung a good boy's bonnet 
 on to Haggart's roof, and we had gone for it 
 with a ladder. We were now sitting up there, 
 
BITE DEU0HAB8. 161 
 
 to see what it was lite. Conversation had 
 languished, but Haggart said " Ay," and then 
 again " Umpha," as one may shove a piece of 
 paper into a dying fire to make a momentary 
 blaze. In the yard the boys were now map- 
 ping out the " Pilgrim's Progress " with kail- 
 runts. Women were sitting on dykes, knit- 
 ting stockings. Snecky Hobart was pitting 
 his potatoes. We could join him presently if 
 Haggart refused to add to our stock of infor- 
 mation ; but the humorist was sucking in his lips, 
 and then blowing them out — and we knew 
 what that meant. To look at his mouth re- 
 hearsing was to be suddenly hungry. We had 
 planted ourselves more firmly on the roof 
 whien — 
 
 " Wha's killing ? " cried Lunan. 
 
 The screech and skirl of a pig under the 
 knife had suddenly shaken Thrums. 
 
 " Lookaboutyou's killing," cried Dite turning 
 hastily to the ladder. 
 
 There followed a rush of feet along the 
 
 Tenements. Snecky Hobart flung down his 
 
 spade, the two laddies plucked up the Slough 
 
 of Despond, and were off before him. The 
 
 women fell off the dykes as if shot. 
 11 
 
162 BITE DEUOnARS. 
 
 " You're coining, Tammas, surely ? " said 
 Dite, already on the ladder. 
 
 " Not me," answered Haggart. " If Look- 
 aboutyou likes to kill without telling me afore- 
 hand, I dinna gang near him." 
 
 " Come awa', Davit," said Dite to Lunan. 
 
 "I dinna deny," said Lunan, "but what my 
 feet's tickly to start ; but this I will say, that 
 it was as Httle as Lookaboutyou could have 
 done to teU Tammas Haggart he was kill- 
 ing." 
 
 " But Tammas hadna speired ? " 
 
 " Speir ! " cried Haggart. " Let me teU 
 you, Dite Deuchars, a humorist doesna speir ; 
 he just answers. But awa' wi' you to the 
 farm ; and teU Lookaboutyou that if he thinks 
 I'm angered at his no telling me he was killing, 
 he was never mair mista'en." 
 
 " I wouldna leave you," said Dite, " if you 
 had been on your adventures, but you're no, 
 and I'm so unlucky, I hardly ever see ony on- 
 common thing." 
 
 " On my adventures I'U be in a minute, for 
 the screaming o' that swine calls to my mind 
 an extraordinar' meeting I had wi' a coachf u' o' 
 pirates." 
 
DITE DEUCHARS. 163 
 
 " Sal, I would like to hear that," said Dite, 
 stepping on to the roof again. 
 
 The squeals of the pig broke out afresh. 
 
 " That's mair than I can stand," cried Dite 
 sliding down the ladder. He ran a few yards, 
 and then turned back undecidedly. 
 
 " Is it a partickler wonderful adventure, 
 Tammas ? " we heard him cry, though we coidd 
 not see him. 
 
 Haggart put his underlip firmly, over the 
 upper one. 
 
 "You micht tell me, Tammas," cried the 
 voice. 
 
 It was not for us to speak, and Haggart 
 would not. 
 
 " I canna make up my mind," Dite continued, 
 sadly, " whether to bide wi' you, or to gang to 
 the killing. If I dinna gang, I'm sure to wish 
 I had ga'en ; and if I gang, I'll think the hale 
 time about what I'm missing." 
 
 We heard him sigh, and then the clatter of 
 his heels. 
 
 " He's a lang time, though," said Lunan, " in 
 turningf the close. We should see him when 
 he gets that length." 
 
 " The onlucky crittur '11 be wavering in the 
 
164 DITE DEUOHABS. 
 
 close," said Haggart, "no able to make up his 
 mind whether to gang on or turn back. I tell 
 you, lads, to have twa minds is as confusing 
 as twins." 
 
 We saw Dite reach the mouth of the close, 
 where he stopped and looked longingly at us. 
 Then he ran on, then he stopped again, then 
 he turned back. 
 
 "He's coming back, after all," said Lunan. 
 
 " Ou, he'U be off again directly," Haggart 
 said, with acumen, as we discoursed the next 
 minute. " Ay, the body's as ondecided as a 
 bairn standing wi' a bawbee in its hand, 
 looking in at the window o' a sweetie 
 shop." 
 
 We saw Dite take the backwynd like one 
 who had at last forgotten our counter- 
 attractions, but just as he was finally dis- 
 appearing from view he ran into a group of 
 women. 
 
 " Tod, he's coming back again," said Lunan, 
 breaking into the middle of Haggart's story. 
 " No wonder the crittur's onlucky ! " 
 
 Dite, however, only came back a httle way. 
 He then climbed the glebe dyke, and hurried 
 ofB up the park. 
 
DITE DBUGSABS. 165 
 
 " He's fair demented," said Lunan, " for 
 that's as little the road to Lookaboutyou's as 
 it's the road to the tap o' this hoose." 
 
 The women sauntered nearer, and when they 
 were within earshot Haggart stopped his nar- 
 rative to shout — 
 
 " Susie Linn, what made Dite Deuchars take 
 the glebe park ? " 
 
 "He's awa' to see Easie Pennycuick's new 
 crutches," replied Susie. " The pridef u' stock 
 has got a pair that cost twal and saxpence (so 
 she says), and she's inviting a'body in to see 
 them." 
 
 " The wy she's lifted up about these crutches," 
 broke in Haggart's wife, Chirsty, from her win- 
 dow, " is hard to bear ; and I ken I'U no gang 
 to look at them. 'Have you seen my new 
 crutches ? ' she says, as soon as her een lichts 
 on you." 
 
 " That's true, Chirsty, and she came in the 
 kirk late wi' them last Sabbath of set purpose. 
 Weel, we telt Dite about them in the backwynd, 
 
 and he's awa' to see them. He said If 
 
 that's no him coming back ! " 
 
 Dite had turned, and was hastening down the 
 field. 
 
166 BITE DEUCHARS. 
 
 " He's changed his mind again," said Lunan. 
 " He's off to the killing, after all." 
 
 " Hoy, Dite Deuchars," shouted Susie Linn. 
 
 Dite hesitated, looking first in the direction of 
 Lookaboutyou's, and then at us. 
 
 " He's coming here," said one of the women. 
 
 " He's halted," said another. 
 
 " He's awa' to the killing at Lookaboutyou's," 
 cried Susie Linn. 
 
 " As sure as death he's climbing into the 
 glebe park again," said Lunan. " Oh, the 
 onlucky body ! " 
 
 " We maun turn our backs to the distracted 
 erittur," said Haggart, " or I'll never finish my 
 adventure." 
 
 It was a marvelous adventure, with as many 
 morals as Dite had minds ; and when we had 
 talked it over, as well as listened to it, we pre- 
 pared to descend the ladder. 
 
 " Ca' canny," cried Haggart, " there's some- 
 body coming up." 
 
 Dite Deuchars, flushed with running, appeared 
 at the top of the ladder. 
 
 " Was it a big swine ? " asked Lunan. 
 
 " I didna gang to the killing. I heard that 
 Easie Penny cuick " 
 
BITE DEUOHARS. 1G7 
 
 " Ay, and what thoeht you of her crutches ? " 
 
 " Truth to tell, Davit, I didna see them, for 
 I couldna make up my mind whether to gang 
 to Easie's or to Lookaboutyou's. They were 
 both so enticing that in the tail o' the day I 
 sat down on the glebe dyke, despising mysel' 
 michty." 
 
 " And a despiseable figure you maun have 
 been." 
 
 " Ay, but I've come back to hear your ad- 
 venture, Tammas." 
 
 " The adventure's finished," repHed Haggart, 
 " and we're coming down." 
 
 Dite tottered ofE the ladder. 
 
 " Dagont ! " he cried. 
 
 " Let this be a warning to you," said Hag- 
 gart, " that them that's greedy for a' thing gets 
 naething." 
 
 Dite, however, was looking so mournful that 
 the very bucket on which he sat down might 
 have been sorry for him. 
 
 " Dinna tell me I'm an iU-gittit man," he 
 said, dejectedly, " for I'm no. A' thing 's agin 
 me. I'm keener to see curious oncommon things 
 than ony ane o' ye, but do I see them? The 
 day the doctor's shalt flung him in the school- 
 
168 BITE DEUCHAR8. 
 
 wynd, whaur was I ? Oh, wi' my usual luck, 
 of course, I had gone round by the banker's 
 close. On the hill, market day, I sat in the 
 quarry for an hour, and naething happened. 
 Syne I taks a dander through the wood, and 
 no suner am I out o' sicht than a ga'en-about 
 body flings himsel' ower the quarry. Jeames 
 McQuhatty and Pete Dundas saw him, though 
 they hadna been there a quarter as lang as me. 
 Sax month on end I'm as reg'lar at the kirk as 
 if I got my living out o' the minister, and nae- 
 thing wonderful occurs ; but one single Sabbath 
 I taks to my bed, and behold ! in the afternoon 
 the minister swounds dead awa' in the pulpit. 
 When the show took fire in the square, was I 
 there ? Na, na, you may be sure I had been 
 sent out o' the wy to the fishing. Did I see 
 Sam'l Eobb fall o£E his hoose ? Not me, though 
 we had been neighbors for a twalmonth. 
 What was the name o' the only man in the 
 east town end that sleepit through the nicht 
 o' the Weavers' Riot and never woke up till 
 it was a' ower ? The name o' that man was 
 Dite Deuchars." 
 
 "Lad, lad, you're onlucky; but I didna 
 ken you had brooded on't like this." 
 
BITE DEUOHABS. 169 
 
 " I've brooded on't till I'm a gey queer 
 character. Tammas Haggart, let me speir this 
 at you. Afore you met the pirate coach, did 
 you or did you no come to a cross-road ? " 
 
 " Man, Dite, I mind I did ; but how did you 
 ken ? " 
 
 " Ken ! I guessed it. I tell you, if I had 
 been in your place, as sure as luck's agin me, 
 I would ha'e ta'en the other road, and never 
 fallen in wi' the pirates ava. That's what it 
 is to be an onlucky man. Tammas Hag- 
 gart " 
 
 "Ay, Dite?" 
 
 " There's few things you dinna see humor 
 in, but I think I ken one that beats you." 
 
 "Namely, yoursel', Dite ? " 
 
 "Namely, mysel'." 
 
 " No, Dite," Haggart said, thoughtfully, " I 
 admit I see no humor in you. Ay, you're a 
 melancholy case. You had better gang awa' 
 to your bed." 
 
 " Sic an onlucky man as me," replied Dite, 
 doggedly, " dOesna deserve a bed. I'm ga'en 
 to sit for an hour on this bucket and sneer at 
 mysel'." 
 
THE MINISTER'S GOWN. 
 
 On the morning after a probationer has been 
 chosen minister of a church, his landlady in- 
 timates through the key-hole of his bedroom 
 that a gentleman has called " about the gown." 
 The gentleman is from a firm that supplies 
 gowns, and he has arrived early to forestall the 
 representative of another firm. About the 
 same time, two ladies (in black jackets) begin 
 to collect from the other ladies of the congre- 
 gation the money which is to pay for the gown, 
 and by and by it is presented to the chosen of 
 the people at a soiree. Such is the natural 
 history of the minister's gown. 
 
 But congregations there be (" by steamer t6 
 Inverary, thence hire ") that love not gowns, 
 and it was one of these that " called " Findlater, 
 M.A., a short year ago. Never until this had 
 
THE MINISTER'S GOWN. 171 
 
 there been a gown in their pulpit, nor did the 
 Session think that innovations should come with 
 Findlater. The ladies of the congregation, 
 however (of whom one had a sealskin coat, and 
 therefore was not to be slighted), "gathered" 
 a gown, and Findlater swore to wear it : and 
 worn it he has every Sunday since, except when 
 it is not there to wear. For the whereabouts of 
 that gown is only known at irregular intervals 
 to many persons at a time. Now it is in the 
 lawful owner's possession, and again in the 
 hands of the enemy — that is, of the Session — 
 who scruple not to make ofE with it of a Satur- 
 day night and restore it to the vestry on Mon- 
 day morning. 
 
 Lest it be concluded that the gown has bred 
 iU-feeling between the pastor and his people, 
 let me say at once that this is not so. It has 
 been admitted by all (though neither in writing 
 nor in spoken words) that, gown or no gown, 
 Findlater is the man for them. True, a maiden 
 who subscribed has been asked to return a ring 
 by a gentleman who, though jiot a deacon, has 
 already the walk of one ; but this she refused 
 to do on the ground that men are hard to get ; 
 and thus a tragedy was averted. Again, though 
 
172 THE MINISTER'S GOWN. 
 
 the opposition is, undeniably, led by the pillars 
 of the Kirk, the gown was presented by her of 
 the sealskin, who was educated at an Edinburgh 
 boarding-school where only Free Church plants 
 are received ; and thus must her actions be right 
 and proper. It is, then, with a chastened ex- 
 ultation that the Session see the minister fail 
 to find his gown ; while on those occasions 
 when he unexpectedly appears in it (they think- 
 ing it to be at that moment hidden in the 
 smiddy), they good-naturedly overlook the tri- 
 umph with which he gives out his first psahn. 
 
 How often the gown has disappeared and 
 been returned or captured I cannot tell. Only 
 occasionally am I in the place for a week-end, 
 and then can no one assure me for certain 
 whether or no we are to have a gown Sunday. 
 At first the gown was kept in the vestry, where 
 it hung on a nail so temptingly that a garden- 
 rake entered by the window and abducted it. 
 That was on a Saturday evening, and service 
 on the following day began some twenty min- 
 utes late. The gown was on its nail by Mon- 
 day at 10 A. M., and locked away in the vestty- 
 press at 11 A. M. ; and for some weeks the min- 
 ister triumphed. Then again had he to preach 
 
THE MINISTER'S GOWN. 173 
 
 without his gown in the forenoon. Between 
 services it was discovered lurking behind a 
 tombstone. Some say that he had left the key 
 in the press : others that, whether locked or 
 not, the press opens if shaken by those who 
 have the knack of it. But those supposed to 
 have the knack of it say nothing, and equally 
 reticent is Findlater, save in the presence of 
 Kirsteen, his housekeeper, who can goad any 
 man to language. 
 
 Latterly Findlater has kept the gown in the 
 manse, from which he now walks to church in 
 it. Even from the manse has it been removed 
 by daring hands, despite (as the minister once 
 thought) Kirsteen's unwearyiag guard over it, 
 but (as he now holds) with the connivance of 
 that double woman. There was a time when 
 Kirsteen was allowed to take the gown to the 
 kitchen, there to renew the seams at the arm- 
 pit, which give way when Findlater is pro- 
 nouncing the benediction ; but then had the 
 gown a habit of running ofP through the shrub- 
 bery the moment her back was turned. Hence 
 the new regulation that, when the gown re- 
 quires mending, it is mended in the minister's 
 presence. 
 
174 TBE MINISTER'S GOWN. 
 
 The lady in the sealskin (which the envious 
 call plush, though they sit immediately behind 
 her, and have felt it with their fingers, when 
 pretending to be merely laying their Bible on 
 the "board") considers Findlater's silence in 
 the face of such persecution singidarly beauti- 
 ful ; and so it is, unless Kirsteen's stories be 
 true of the way he opens out on the subject to 
 her. Only once in public has the gown led to 
 his forgetting himself : and then the circum- 
 stances were trying. The manse garden and 
 the church were only the breadth of a burn and 
 a high-road apart, and the minister has to jump 
 the burn. I have seen him do so often, and 
 always first with a look round to apologize for 
 the undignified nature of the act. Such, I am 
 sure, is his meaning ; but there are those who 
 maintain that he only looks about him to make 
 sure that no one is in the vicinity with designs 
 on the gown. On the occasion in question, 
 just as he was on the point of jumping, it 
 seemed to him that an impious hand had tried 
 to pluck the gown off him. His assailant was 
 in reality but the branch of a tree dipping sud- 
 denly in the wind tiU it touched his shoulder; 
 but before Findlater realized this he clutched 
 
THE MINISTER'S GOWN. 175 
 
 his gown with both hands and — said some- 
 thing. 
 
 I called at the manse to-day and found Find- 
 later in his study, busy at his sermon. He was 
 sitting on the goAvn. 
 
THE CAPTAIN OF THE SCHOOL 
 
 When Peterkin, who is twelve, wrote to us 
 that there was a possibility (" but don't count 
 on it," he said) oi his bringing the captain of 
 the school home with him for a holiday, we had 
 little conception what it meant. The captain 
 we only knew by report as the "man " who 
 lifted leg-baUs over the pavihon and was said 
 to have made a joke to the head-master's wife. 
 By and by we understood the distinction that 
 was to be conferred on us. Peterkin instructed 
 his mother to send the captain a formal invita- 
 tion addressed " J. Rawlins, Esq." This was 
 done, but in such a way that Peterkin feared 
 we might lose our distinguished visitor. " You 
 shouldn't have asked him for aU the holidays," 
 Peterkin wrote, " as he has promised a heap of 
 fellows." Then came a condescending note 
 
178 THE CAPTAIN OF TBE SCHOOL. 
 
 from the captain, saying that if he cotild manage 
 it he would give us a few days. In this letter 
 he referred to Peterkin as his young friend. 
 Peterkin wrote shortly afterwards asking his 
 sister Grizel to send him her photograph. " If 
 you haven't one," he added, " what is the color 
 of your eyes ? " Grizel is eighteen, which is 
 also, I helieve, the age of J. Eawlins. We 
 concluded that the captain had heen sounding 
 Peterkin about the attractions that our home 
 could ofEer him ; but Grizel neither sent her 
 brother a photograph nor any account of her 
 personal appearance. " It doesn't matter," 
 Peterkin wrote back ; " I told him you were 
 dark." Grizel is rather fair, but Peterkin had 
 not noticed that. 
 
 Up to the very last he was in an agony lest 
 the captain should disappoint him. " Don't 
 teU anybody he is coming," he advised us, " for 
 of course there is no saying what may turn up." 
 Nevertheless the captain came, and we sent the 
 dog-cart to the station to meet him and Peter- 
 kin. On aU previous occasions one of us had 
 gone to the station with the cart ; but Peterkin 
 wrote asking us not to do so this time. 
 " Rawlins hates any fuss," he said. 
 
THE CAPTAIN OF THE SCHOOL. 179 
 
 Somewhat to our relief, we found the captain 
 more modest than it would have been reason- 
 able to expect. " This is Kawlins," was Peter- 
 kia's simple introduction ; but it could not 
 have been done with more pride had the guest 
 been Mr. W. Gr. Grace himself. One thing I 
 liked in Rawlins from the first : his considera- 
 tion for others. When Peterkin's mother and 
 sister embraced that boy on the doorstep, RawHns 
 pretended not to see. Peterkin frowned, how- 
 ever, at this show of affection, and with a red 
 face looked at the captain to see how he took 
 it. With much good taste, Peterkin said 
 nothing about this " fuss " on the door-step, 
 and I concluded that he would let it slide. It 
 has so far been a characteristic of that boy that 
 he can let anything which is disagreeable escape 
 his memory. This time, however, as I sub- 
 sequently learned, he had only bottled up his 
 wrath to pour it out upon his sister. Finding 
 her alone in the course of the day, he opened 
 his mind by remarking that this was a nice sort 
 of thing she had done, making a fool of him 
 before another fellow. Asked boldly — for 
 Grizel can be freezing on occasion not only to 
 her own brother, but to other people's brothers 
 
180 THE CAPTAIN OF THE SCHOOL. 
 
 — what he meant, Peterkin inquired hotly if 
 she was going to pretend that she had not 
 kissed him in Rawlins' presence. Grizel replied 
 that if Rawlins thought anything of that he 
 was a nasty boy ; at which Peterkin echoed 
 " boy " with a grim laugh, and said he only 
 hoped she would see the captain some day when 
 the ground suited his style of bowling. Grizel 
 replied contemptuously that the time would 
 come when both Peterkin and his disagreeable 
 friend would be glad to be kissed ; upon which 
 her brother flung out of the room, warmly 
 protesting that she had no right to bring such 
 charges against fellows. 
 
 Though Grizel was thus a little prejtidiced 
 against the captain, he had not been a day in 
 the house when we began to feel the honor 
 that his visit conferred on us. He was modest 
 almost to the verge of shyness ; but it was the 
 modesty that is worn by a man who knows he 
 can afEord it. While Peterkin was there 
 Rawlins had no need to boast, for Peterkin did 
 the boasting for him. When, however, the 
 captain exerted himself to talk, Peterkin was 
 contented to retire into the shade and gaze at 
 him. He would look at all of us from his seat 
 
THE CAPTAIN OF THE SCHOOL. 181 
 
 in the background, and note how Eawlins was 
 striking us. Peterkin's face as he gazed upon 
 that of the captain went far beyond the rapt- 
 ure of a lover singing to his mistress's eye- 
 brow. He fetched and carried for him, antici- 
 pated his wants as if Rawlins were an invalid, 
 and bore his rebukes meekly. When Rawhns 
 thought that PeterMn was speaking too much, 
 he had merely to tell him to shut up, when 
 Peterkin instantly coUapsed. We noticed one 
 great change in Peterkin. Formerly, when he 
 came home for the holidays he had strongly 
 objected to making what he called drawing- 
 room calls, but aU that was changed. Now he 
 went from house to house showing the captain 
 off. " This is Rawlins," remained his favorite 
 form of introduction. He is a boy who can 
 never feel comfortable in a drawing-room, and 
 so the visits were generally of short duration. 
 They had to go because they were due in 
 another house in a quarter of an hour, or he 
 had promised to let Jemmy Clinker (who is 
 our local cobbler and a great cricketer) see 
 Rawlins. When a lady engaged the captain 
 in conversation, Peterkin did not scruple to 
 sign to her not to bother him too much; and 
 
182 TBE CAPTAIN OF THE SCHOOL. 
 
 if they were asked to call again, Peterkin said 
 he couldn't promise. There was a remarkable 
 thing the captain could do to a walking stick, 
 which Peterkin wanted him to do everywhere. 
 It consisted in lying flat on the floor, and then 
 raising yourself in an extraordinary way by 
 means of the stick. I believe it is a very 
 difficult feat, and the only time I saw our 
 guest prevailed upon to perform it he looked 
 rather apoplectic. Sometimes he would not do 
 it, apparently because he was not certain 
 whether it was a dignified proceeding. He 
 found it very hard, nevertheless, to resist the 
 temptation, and it was the glory of Peterkin to 
 see him yield to it. From certain noises heard 
 in Peterkin's bedroom it is believed that he is 
 practicing the feat himself. 
 
 Peterkin, you must be told, is an afEectionate 
 boy, and almost demonstrative to his relatives 
 if no one is looking. He was consequently 
 very anxious to know what the captain thought 
 of us all, and brought us our testimonials as 
 proudly as if they were medals awarded for 
 saving life at sea. It is pleasant to me to 
 know that I am the kind of governor Eawlins 
 would have liked himself, had he required one. 
 
TBE CAPTAIN OF THE SCHOOL. 183 
 
 Peterkin's mother, however, is the captain's 
 favorite. She pretended to take the young 
 man's preference as a joke when her son in- 
 formed her of it, but in reaHty I am sure she 
 felt greatly relieved. If Rawlins had objected 
 to us, it would have put Peterkin in a very 
 awkward position. As for Grizel, the captain 
 thinks her a very nice little girl, but " for 
 choice," he says (according to Peterkin), 
 " give him a bigger woman.'' Grizel was 
 greatly annoyed when he told her this, which 
 much surprised him, for he thought it quite as 
 much as she had any right to expect. On the 
 whole we were perhaps rather glad when Rawl- 
 ins left, for it was somewhat trying to live up 
 to him. Peterkin's mother, too, has discovered 
 that her boy has become round-shouldered. It 
 is beheved that this is the result of a habit he 
 acquired when in Rawlins' company of leaning 
 forward to catch what people were saying about 
 the captain. 
 
A POWERFUL DRUG. 
 (ko household should be without it.) 
 
 All respectable chemists, Montgomery as- 
 sures me, keep the cio-root. That is the name 
 of the drug, and Montgomery is the man who 
 ought to write its testimonials. This is a testi- 
 monial to the efficacy of the cio-root, and I 
 write it the more willingly because, until the 
 case of Montgomery cropped up, I had no faith 
 in patent medicines. Seeing, however, is, they 
 say, believing ; and I have seen what the cio- 
 root did for Montgomery. I can well beheve 
 now that it can do anything, from removing 
 grease-spots to making your child cry out in the 
 night. 
 
 Montgomery, who was married years ago, is 
 subject to headaches, and formerly his only 
 way of treating them was to lie in bed and 
 read a light novel. By the time the novel was 
 
186 A POWERFUL BBUG. 
 
 finished, so, as a rule, was the headache. This 
 treatment rather interfered with his work, how- 
 ever, and he tried various medicines which 
 were guaranteed to cure rapidly. None of 
 them had the least result, until one day, some 
 two months ago, good fortune made him run 
 against an old friend in Chambers Street. 
 Montgomery, having a headache, mentioned it, 
 and his friend asked him if he had tried the 
 cio-root. The name even was unfamiliar to 
 Montgomery, but his friend spoke so enthusias- 
 tically of it that the h,eadache man took a note 
 of it. He was told that it had never been 
 known to fail, and the particular merit of it 
 was that it drove the headache away in five 
 minutes. The proper dose to take was half an 
 inch of the root, which was to be sucked 
 and eventually swallowed. Montgomery tried 
 several chemists in vain, for they had not heard 
 of it, but at last he got it on George IV. 
 Bridge. He had so often carried home in 
 triumph a "certain cure," which was subse- 
 quently flung out of the window in disgust, 
 that his wife shook her head at the cio-root, 
 and advised him not to be too hopeful. How- 
 ever, the cio-root surpassed the fondest expec- 
 
A POWERFUL DRVG. 187 
 
 tations. It completely cured Montgomery in 
 less than the five minutes. Several times he tried 
 it, and always with the same triumphant result. 
 Having at last got a drug to make an idol of, 
 it is not perhaps to be wondered at that Mont- 
 gomery was full of gratitude. He kept a three- 
 pound tin of the cio-root on his library-table, 
 and the moment he felt a headache coming on 
 he said, " Excuse me for one moment," and bit 
 ofE half an inch of cio-root. 
 
 The headaches never had a chance. It was 
 therefore natiiral, though none the less annoy- 
 ing, that his one topic of conversation should 
 become the properties of this remarkable drug. 
 You would drop in on him, glowing over the 
 prospect of a delightful two hours' wrangle over 
 the crofter question, but he pushed the subject 
 away with a wave of his hand, and begged to 
 introduce to our notice the cio-root. Sitting 
 there smoking, his somewhat dull countenance 
 would suddenly light up as his eyes came to 
 rest on the three-pound tin. He was always 
 advising us to try the cio-root, and when we 
 said we did not have a headache he got sulky. 
 The first thing he asked us when we met was 
 whether we had a headache, and often he clipped 
 
188 A POWERFUL DRUG. 
 
 off an inch or two of the cio-root and gave it us 
 in a piece of paper, so that the headache might 
 not take us unawares. I helieve he rather en- 
 joyed waking with a headache, for he knew that 
 it would not have a chance. If his wife had 
 been a jealous woman, she would not have Hked 
 the way he talked of the cio-root. 
 
 Some of us did try the drug, either to please 
 him or because we were reaUy curious about it. 
 Whatever the reason, none of us, I think, were 
 prejudiced. We tested it on its merits, and 
 came unanimously to the conclusion that they 
 were negative. The cio-root did us no harm. 
 The taste was what one may imagine to be the 
 taste of the root of any rotten tree dipped in 
 tar, which was subsequently allowed to dry. 
 As we were all of one mind on the subject, we 
 insisted with Montgomery that the cio-root was 
 a fraud. Frequently we had such altercations 
 with him on the subject that we parted in sneers, 
 and ultimately we said that it would be best not 
 to goad him too far ; so we arranged merely to 
 chaff him about his faith in the root, and never 
 went farther than insisting, in a pleasant way, 
 that he was cured, not by the cio-root, but by 
 his believing in it. Montgomery rejected this 
 
A POWERFUL DRUG. 189 
 
 theory with indignation, but we stuck to it and 
 never doubted it. Events, nevertheless, will 
 show you that Montgomery was right and that 
 we were wrong. 
 
 The triumph of cio-root came as recently as 
 yesterday. Montgomery, his wife, and myself 
 had arranged to go into Glasgow for the day. I 
 called for them in the forenoon and had to wait, 
 as Montgomery had gone along to the office to 
 see if there were any letters. He arrived soon 
 after me, saying that he had a headache, but 
 saying it in a cheery way, for he knew that the 
 root was in the next room. He disappeared 
 into the library to nibble half an inch of the 
 cio-root, and shortly afterwards we set off. The 
 headache had been dispelled as usual. In the 
 train he and I had another argument about the 
 one great drug, and he ridiculed my notion 
 about its being faith that drove his headache 
 away. I may hurry over the next two hours, up 
 to the time when we wandered into Buchanan 
 Street. There Montgomery met a friend, to 
 whom he introduced me. The gentleman was 
 in a hurry, so we only spoke for a moment, but 
 after he had left us he turned back. 
 
 " Montgomery," he said, "do you remember 
 
190 A POWERFUL DBUG. 
 
 that day I met you in Chambers Street, Edin- 
 burgh ? " 
 
 " I have good reason for remembering the 
 occasion," said Montgomery, meaning to begin 
 the story of his wonderful cure ; but his friend, 
 who had, to catch a 'bus, cut him short. 
 
 " I told you at that time," he said, " about 
 a new drug called the cio-root, which had a 
 great reputation for curing headaches." 
 
 " Yes," said Montgomery ; " I always wanted 
 to thank you " 
 
 His friend, however, broke in again — 
 
 " I have been troubled in my mind since 
 then," he said, " because I was told afterwards ' 
 that I had made a mistake about the proper 
 dose. If you try the cio-root, don't take half 
 an inch, as I recommended, but a quarter of 
 an inch. Don't forget. It is of vital import- 
 ance." 
 
 Then he jumped into his 'bus, but I called 
 after him, " What would be the effect of half 
 an inch ? " 
 
 " Certain death," he shouted back, and was 
 gone. I turned to look at Montgomery and 
 his wife. She let her umbrella fall and he 
 had turned white. " Of course there is noth- 
 
A POWEBFUL DRUG. 191 
 
 ing to be alarmed about," I said, in a reassur- 
 ing way. " Montgomery has taken half an 
 inch scores of times; you say it always cured 
 you?" 
 
 " Yes, yes," Montgomery answered ; but 
 his voice sounded hollow. 
 
 Up to this point the snow had kept off, but 
 now it began to fall in a soaking drizzle. If 
 you are superstitious you can take this as an 
 omen. For the rest of the day, certainly, we 
 had a miserable time of it. I had to do all 
 the talking, and while I laughed and jested, I 
 noticed that Mrs. Montgomery was looking 
 anxiously from time to time at her husband. 
 She was afraid to ask him if he felt unwell, 
 and he kept up, not wanting to alarm her. 
 But he walked hke a man who knew that he 
 had come to his last page. At my suggestion 
 we went to St. Enoch's Station Hotel to have 
 dinner. I had dinner, Mrs. Montgomery pre- 
 tended to have dinner, but Montgomery him- 
 self did not even make the pretence. He sat 
 with his elbows on the table and his face buried 
 in his hands. At last he said with a groan 
 that he was feeling very ill. He looked so 
 doleful that his wife began to cry. 
 
192 A POWEEFUL BBUG. 
 
 Montgomery admitted that he blamed the 
 cio-root for his sufferings. He had taken an 
 overdose of it, he said, tragically, and must 
 abide the consequences. I could have shaken 
 him, for reasoning was quite flung away on him. 
 Of course, I repeated what I had said pre^aously 
 about an overdose having done him no harm 
 before, but he only shook his head sadly. I 
 said that his behavior now proved my conten- 
 tion that he only believed in the cio-root 
 because he was told that it had wonderful 
 properties ; otherwise he would have laughed 
 at what his friend had just told him. Ufadoubt- 
 edly, I said, his sufferings to-day were purely 
 imaginary. Montgomery did not have suffi- 
 cient spirits to argue with me, but he murmured 
 in a die-away voice that he had felt strange 
 symptoms ever since we set out from Edin- 
 burgh. Now, this was as absurd as anything 
 in Euclid, for he had been boasting of the 
 wonderful cure the drug had effected again, 
 most of the way between Edinburgh and 
 Glasgow. He insisted that he had a spUtting 
 headache, and that he was very sick. In the 
 end, as his wife was now in a frenzy, I sent 
 out for a doctor. The doctor came, said " Yes " 
 
A POWERFUL DRUG. 193 
 
 and " Quite so " to himself, and pronounced 
 Montgomery feverish. That he was feverish 
 by this time, I do not question. He had 
 vrorked himself into a fever. There was some 
 talk of putting him to bed in the hotel, but he 
 insisted on going home. Though he did not 
 put it so plainly, he gave us to understand 
 that he wanted to die in his own bed. 
 
 Never was there a more miserable trio than 
 we in a railway carriage. We got a compart- 
 ment to ourselves, for, though several passen- 
 gers opened the door to come in, they shrank 
 back as soon as they saw Montgomery's ghastly 
 face. He lay in a corner of the carriage, with 
 his head done up in flannel, procured at the 
 hotel. He had the rugs and my great-coat 
 over his legs, but he shivered despite them, 
 and when he spoke at aU, except to say that he 
 was feeling worse every minute, it was to talk 
 of men cut off in their prime and widows left 
 destitute. At Mrs. Montgomery's wish I tel- 
 egraphed, from a station at which the train 
 stopped, to the family doctor in Edinburgh, 
 asking him to meet us at the house. He did 
 so ; indeed, he was on the steps to help 
 Montgomery up them. We took an arm of 
 
194 A POWERFUL DRUG. 
 
 the invaKd apiece, and dragged him into the 
 library. 
 
 It was a fortunate thing that we went into 
 the library, for the first thing Montgomery saw 
 on the table was the half -inch of cio-root which 
 he thought had killed him. He had forgotten 
 to take it. 
 
 In ten minutes he was all right. Just as we 
 were sitting down to supper, we heard a cat 
 squalling outside. Montgomery flung a three- 
 pound tin of the cio-root at it. 
 
EVERY MAN HIS OWN DOCTOR. 
 
 Statistics showing the number of persons 
 who yearly meet their death in our great cities 
 by the fall of telegraph wires are published 
 from time to time. As our cities grow, and 
 the need of telegraphic communication is more 
 generally felt, this danger will become even 
 more conspicuous. Persons who value their 
 lives are earnestly advised not to walk under 
 telegraph wires. 
 
 Is it generally realized that every day at 
 least one fatal accident occurs in our streets ? 
 So many of these take place at crossings that 
 we would strongly urge the public never to 
 venture across a busy street until all the vehi- 
 cles have passed. 
 
 We find prevalent among our readers an 
 impression that country life is comparatively 
 
196 EVERY MAN BIS OWN BOCTOn. 
 
 safe. This mistake has cost Great Britain 
 many lives. The country is so full of hidden 
 dangers that one may be said to risk his health 
 every time he ventures into it. 
 
 We feel it our duty to remind holiday-makers 
 that when in the country in the open air, they 
 should never sit down. Many a man, aye, and 
 woman too, has been done to death by neglect- 
 ing this simple precaution. The recklessness 
 of the public, indeed, in such matters is incom- 
 prehensible. The day is hot, they see an in- 
 viting grassy bank, and down they sit. Need 
 we repeat that despite the sun (which is ever 
 treacherous) they should continue walking at 
 a smart pace? Yes, bitter experience has 
 taught us that we must repeat such warnings. 
 
 When walking in the country hoUday-makers 
 should avoid over-heating themselves. Noth- 
 ing is so conducive to disease. We have no 
 hesitation in saying that nine-tenths of the 
 colds that prove fatal are caught through neg- 
 lect of this simple rule. 
 
 Beware of walking on grass. Though it 
 may be dry to the touch, damp is ever present, 
 and cold caught in this way is always difficult 
 to cure. 
 
EVEBr MAN HIS OWN DOCTOR. 197 
 
 Avoid high roads in the country. They are, 
 for the most part, unsheltered, and on hot days 
 the sun beats upon them unmercifully. The 
 perspiration that ensues is the beginning of 
 many a troublesome illness. 
 
 Country lanes are stuffy and unhealthy, 
 owing to the sun not getting free ingress into 
 them. They should, therefore, be avoided by 
 all who value their health. 
 
 In a magazine we observe an article extolling 
 the pleasures of walking in a wood. That 
 walking in a wood may be pleasant we do not 
 deny, but for our own part we avoid woods. 
 More draughty places could not well be 
 imagined, and many a person who has walked 
 in a wood has had cause to repent it for the 
 rest of his life. 
 
 It is every doctor's experience that there is a 
 large public which breaks down in health sim- 
 ply because it does not take sufficient exercise 
 in the open air. Once more we would remind 
 our readers that every man, woman, or chUd 
 who does not spend at least two hours daily in 
 the open air is slowly committing suicide. 
 
 How pitiful it is to hear a business man say, 
 as business men so often say : " Eeally I can- 
 
198 EVERT MAN HIS OWN DOCTOR. 
 
 not take a holiday this summer, my business 
 ties me so to my desk, and, besides, I am feel- 
 ing quite well. No, I shall send my wife and 
 children to the seaside, and content myself with 
 a Saturday-to-Monday now and again." We 
 solemnly warn all such foolish persons that 
 they are digging their own graves. Change 
 is absolutely essential to health. 
 
 Asked the other day why coughs were so 
 prevalent in the autumn, we replied without 
 hesitation, " Because during the past month or 
 tv/o so many persons have changed their beds." 
 City people rush to the seaside in their thou- 
 sands, and here is the result. A change of beds 
 is dangerous to all, but perhaps chiefly to per- 
 sons of middle age. We have so often warned 
 the public of this that we can only add now, 
 "If they continue to disregard our warning, 
 their blood be on their own heads." This we 
 say not in anger, but in sorrow. 
 
 A case has come to our knowledge of a penny 
 causing death. It had passed through the hands 
 of a person suffering from infectious fever into 
 those of a child, who got it as change from a 
 shop. The child took fever and died in about 
 a fortnight. We would not have mentioned 
 
EVERY MAN HIS OWN DOCTOR. 199 
 
 this case had we not known it to be but an in- 
 stance of what is happening daily. Infection 
 is frequently spread by money, and we would 
 strongly urge no one to take change (especially 
 coppers), from another without seeing it first 
 dipped in warm water. Who can tell where 
 the penny he gets in change from the news- 
 paper-boy has come from ? 
 
 If ladies, who are ever purchasing new 
 clothes, were aware that disease often lurks in 
 these, they would be less anxious to enter dress- 
 makers' shops. The saleswoman who "fits" 
 them may come daily from a home where her 
 sister lies sick of a fever, or the dress may have 
 been made in some East End den, where infec- 
 tion is rampant. Cases of the kind frequently 
 come to our knowledge, and w^ would warn the 
 public against this danger that is ever present 
 among us. 
 
 Must we again enter a protest against insuf- 
 ficient clothing ? We never take a walk along 
 any of our fashionable thoroughfares without 
 seeing scores of persons, especially ladies, in- 
 sufiiciently clad. The same spectacle, alas ! may 
 be witnessed in the East End, but for a differ- 
 ent reason. Fashionable ladies have a horror 
 
200 EVEBY MAN HIS OWN DOCTOR. 
 
 of seeming stout, and to retain a slim appear- 
 ance they will sufBer agonies of cold. The 
 world would be appalled if it knew how many 
 of these women die before their fortieth year. 
 
 We dress far too heavily. The fact is, that 
 we would be a much healthier people if we wore 
 less clothing. Ladies, especially, wrap them- 
 selves up too much, with the result that their 
 blood does not circulate freely. Coats, ulsters, 
 and other wraps cause far more colds than they 
 prevent. 
 
 Why have our ladies not the smattering of 
 scientific knowledge that would tell them to 
 vary the thickness of their clothing with the 
 weather ? New garments, indeed, they do don 
 for winter, but how many of them put on 
 extra flannels ? 
 
 We are far too frightened of the weather, 
 treating it as our enemy when it is ready to be 
 our friend. With the first appearance of frost 
 we fly to extra flannel, and thus dangerously 
 overheat ourselves. 
 
 Though there has been a great improvement 
 in this matter in recent years, it would be idle 
 to pretend that we are yet a cleanly nation. 
 To speak bluntly, we do not change our under- 
 
EVMBY MAN HIS OWN DOCTOR. 201 
 
 garments with sufficient frequency. This may 
 be owing to various reasons, but none of them 
 is an excuse. Frequent change of under- 
 clothing is a necessity for the preservation of 
 health, and woe to those who neglect this 
 simple precaution. 
 
 Owing to the carelessness of servants and 
 others, it is not going too far to say that four 
 times in five, under-garments are put on in a 
 state of semi-dampness. What a fearful danger 
 is here. We do not hesitate to say that every 
 time a person changes his linen he does it at 
 his peril. 
 
 This is such an age of bustle that compara- 
 tively few persons take time to digest their 
 food. They swallow it, and run. Yet they 
 complain of not being in good health. The 
 wonder rather is that they do not fall dead in 
 the street, as, indeed, many of them do. 
 
 How often have doctors been called in to 
 patients whom they find crouching by the fire- 
 side and complaining of indigestion ? Too many 
 medical men pamper such patients, though it 
 is their plain duty to tell the truth. And what 
 is the truth? Why, simply this, that after 
 dinner the patient is in the habit of spending 
 
202 EVEBT MAN SIS OWN DOCTOB. 
 
 his evening in an arm-chair, when he ought to 
 be out in the open air, walking off the effects 
 of his heavy meal. 
 
 Those who work hard ought to eat plenti- 
 fully, or they will find that they are burning 
 the candle at both ends. Surely no science is 
 required to prove this. Work is, so to speak, 
 a furnace, and the brighter the fire the more 
 coals it ought to be fed with, or it will go out. 
 Yet we are a people who let our systems go 
 down by disregarding this most elementary and 
 obvious rule of health. 
 
 If doctors could afford to be outspoken they 
 would, twenty times a day, tell patients that they 
 are simply suffering from over-eating them- 
 selves. Every foreigner who visits this country 
 is struck by this propensity of ours to eat too 
 much. 
 
 Very heart-breaking are the statistics now to 
 hand from America about the increase in smok- 
 ing. That this fatal habit is also growing in 
 favor in this country, every man who uses his 
 eyes must see. What will be the end of it we 
 shudder to think, but we warn those in high 
 places that if tobacco smoking is not checked, 
 it will sap the very vitals of this country. 
 
EVERY MAN HIS OWN DOCTOR. 203 
 
 Why is it that nearly every young man one 
 meets in the streets is haggard and pale ? No 
 one will deny that it is due to tobacco. As 
 for the miserable wretch himself, his troubles 
 will soon be over. 
 
 We have felt it our duty from time to time 
 to protest against what is known as the anti- 
 tobacco campaign. We are, we believe, under 
 the mark in saying that nine doctors in every 
 ten smoke, which is sufficient disproof of the 
 absurd theory that the medical profession, as a 
 whole, are against smoking. As a disinfectant, 
 we are aware that tobacco has saved many lives. 
 In these days of wear and tear, it is especially 
 useful as a sedative ; indeed, many times a day, 
 as we pass pale young men in the streets, whose 
 pallor is obviously due to over-excitement about 
 their businesses, we have thought of stopping 
 them, and ordering a pipe as the medicine they 
 chiefly require. 
 
 Even were it not a destroyer of health, smok- 
 ing could be condemned for the good and 
 sufficient reason that it makes man selfish. It 
 takes away from his interest in conversation, 
 gives him a liking for solitude, and deprives 
 the family circle of his presence. 
 
204 EVEBT MAN HIS OWN DOCTOR. 
 
 Not only is smoking excellent for the health, 
 but it makes the smoker a better man. It ties 
 him down more to the domestic circle, and 
 loosens his tongue. In short, it makes him 
 less selfish. 
 
 No one will deny that smoking and drinking 
 go together. The one provokes a taste for the 
 other, and many a man who has died a drunkard 
 had tobacco to thank for giving him the taste 
 for drink. 
 
 Every one is aware that heavy smokers are 
 seldom heavy drinkers. When asked, as we 
 often are, for a cure for the drink madness, we 
 have never any hesitation in advising the appli- 
 cation of tobacco in larger quantities 
 
 Finally, smoking stupefies the intellect. 
 
 In conclusion, we would remind our readers 
 that our deepest thinkers have almost invari- 
 ably been heavy smokers. Some of them have 
 gone so far as to say that they owe their intel- 
 lects to their pipes. 
 
 The clerical profession is so poorly paid that 
 we would not advise any parent to send his son 
 into it. Poverty means insufficiency in many 
 ways, and that means physical disease. 
 
 Not only is the medical profession over- 
 
EVERY MAN HIS OWN DOCTOB. 205 
 
 stocked (like all the others), but medical work 
 is terribly trying to the constitution. Doctors 
 are a short-lived race. 
 
 The law is such a sedentary calling, that 
 parents who care for their sons' health should 
 advise them against it. 
 
 Most literary people die of starvation. 
 
 Trades are very trying to the young ; indeed, 
 every one of them has its dangers. Painters 
 die from blood poisoning, for instance, and 
 masons from the inclemency of the weather. 
 The commercial life on 'Change is so exciting 
 that for a man without a specially strong heart 
 to venture into it is to court death. 
 
 There is, perhaps, no such enemy to health 
 as want of occupation. We would entreat aU 
 young men, therefore, whether of private 
 means or not, to attach themselves to some 
 healthy calling. 
 
SHUTTING A MAP. 
 
 A NOTE OF WARNING. 
 
 Prominent among the curses of civilization 
 is the map that folds up " convenient for the 
 pocket." There are men who can do almost 
 everything except shut a map. It is calculated 
 that the energy wasted yearly in denouncing 
 these maps to their face would build the Eiffel 
 Tower in thirteen weeks. 
 
 Almost every house has a map warranted to 
 shut easily, which the whole family, working 
 together, is unable to fold. It is generally 
 concealed at the back of a press, with a heavy 
 book on it to keep it down. If you remove 
 the book, the map springs up Hke a concertina. 
 Sometimes after the press is shut you observe 
 something hanging out. This is sure to be 
 part of the map. If you push this part m, 
 another part takes its place. No press is large 
 enough to hold a map that shuts. This is be- 
 
208 SHUTTING A MAP. 
 
 cause maps that shut are maps that won't shut. 
 They haye about as much intention of shutting 
 when you buy them as the lady has of obeying 
 her husband when she gives a promise to that 
 effect in the marriage service. 
 
 Maps that shut may also be compared to the 
 toys that whistle, spin, or jump when the shop- 
 man is showing you how to work them, or to 
 the machinery that makes mangling a pleasure, 
 or to the instrument that sharpens a pencil in 
 no time. These are completely under the 
 control of the shopman, but after you have 
 bought them and taken them home they 
 become as uncertain in temper as a nervous 
 
 dog. 
 
 The impossibility of shutting maps except 
 by accident having been long notorious, it is 
 perhaps remarkable that the public should go 
 on buying them. There are hundreds of per- 
 sons engaged at this moment upon making maps 
 that shut (as the advertisement puts it), and 
 there must, therefore, be a demand to meet 
 such a supply. It is vanity that brings so 
 many people to folly. 
 
 To do the nineteenth century justice, no 
 one nowadays enters a shop with the object of 
 
SHUTTING A MAP. 209 
 
 buying a map that shuts. Wives, especially 
 young ones, have asked their husbands to buy 
 curious things for them ; and husbands, espe- 
 cially old ones, have done it without being asked. 
 But no wife who ever valued her domestic 
 happiness has ever requested her husband to 
 run into a shop in passing and buy a map 
 that shuts. Even if she did, the husband 
 would refuse. He might buy " Pigs in clover " 
 if she wanted it ; but the map puzzle, never. 
 
 Yet it has to be sorrowfully admitted that 
 the street could be paved with the maps we do 
 buy. Vanity is the true cause of our fall, but 
 a shopman is the instrument. That even shop- 
 men can shut maps which do not shut except 
 in the shop, no thoughtful person beheves ; 
 but over a counter they do it as easily and 
 prettily as a conjurer plays with cards. 
 
 " Have you seen this new map ? " they ask 
 with affected carelessness, while they tie up your 
 books. 
 
 " Anything special about it ? " you reply, 
 guardedly. 
 
 " Well, yes ; it is very convenient for the 
 
 pocket." 
 
 At the words " convenient for the pocket " 
 14 
 
210 SHUTTING A MAP. 
 
 you ought to up Tvith your books and run, for 
 they are a danger signal ; but you hesitate and 
 are lost. 
 
 " You see," he goes on, " it folds into un- 
 usually small space." 
 
 This is merely another way of saying, " You 
 see this is the worst kind of map that has been 
 yet invented." 
 
 " These maps that shut are so difficult to 
 shut," you venture to say. He laughs. 
 
 " My dear sir," he says, " a chUd could shut 
 this one." 
 
 Then he opens and shuts it Uke a lady ma- 
 nipulating her fan, and a fierce desire grows 
 within you to do likewise. When you leave 
 the shop you take away with you a map con- 
 venient for the pocket. 
 
 What makes you buy it ? In your heart you 
 know that you are only taking home a pocket- 
 ful of unhappiness, but you have the pride of 
 life. 'In an age when we have made slaves of 
 electricity and steam, it seems humiliating that 
 we cannot shut a map. We have ceased, as a 
 people, to look for the secret of perpetual mo- 
 tion, but we still hanker after the secret of how 
 to shut a map. 
 
SHUTTING A MAP. 211 
 
 No doubt the most maddening thing about 
 maps that shut is that they do shut occasionally. 
 They never shut, however, when you are par- 
 ticularly anxious that they should do so — ^be- 
 fore company, for instance. Very probably you 
 take the map with you from the shop to your 
 office, and there open it up. To your deUght 
 it shuts quite easily. This gives you a false 
 feeling of security. If you would really know 
 whether this map shuts more easily than the 
 various other ones over which you have lost 
 your temper, ask your office-boy to come in and 
 see you shut it. You will find that it no longer 
 shuts. This is a sure test. 
 
 Instead of experimenting in this way, and 
 ordering the boy out of the room when you see 
 him trying to get his face behind his hand, you 
 are so foolish as to take the map home with 
 you, to let your wife see how easily it shuts. 
 If you are a keen observer you will notice her 
 turn white when she sees you produce the map 
 from your pocket. She knows there will be no 
 harmony this evening, and her first determina- 
 tion is to keep the map from you until after 
 dinner. 
 
 What follows when you produce the map and 
 
212 SHUTTING A MAP. 
 
 begin, is too well known to require description. 
 What you ought to do in the circumstances no 
 one out of a pulpit could tell you, tut there 
 are certain negative rules which it would be 
 well if you would observe. For instance — 
 
 Do not he too sanguine. — Your tendency is 
 to open the map with a flourish, as one some- 
 times unfurls a handkerchief. Accompanied 
 by the remark that nothing is easier than to 
 shut a map once you have the knack of it, this 
 raises hopes which are not likely to be realized. 
 The smile of anticipatory triumph on your face 
 loses you the sympathy which is your right at 
 such a moment. If you are over-confident, the 
 feeling is that your failure will do you good. 
 On the other hand. 
 
 Keep your misgivings to yourself. — Most 
 men, however confident they have been when 
 thinking of the ease with which they can close 
 maps, lose hope at the last moment, and admit 
 that perhaps they have forgotten the way. This 
 is a mistake, for there is always just a possibility 
 of the map's shutting as easily as an ordinary 
 book. Should you have prefaced your attempt 
 with misgivings, you will not get the credit of 
 this, and it will be ascribed to chance. There- 
 
SHUTTING A MAP. 213 
 
 fore, be neither too sanguine nor too openly 
 doubtful. 
 
 Dont repeat the experiment. — This, of 
 course, is in the improbable event of your suc- 
 ceeding the first time. At once hand over the 
 map to your wife, as if you had solved the 
 puzzle forever. Encouraged by your success 
 she will probably attempt it also and fail, when 
 the chances are that she will ask you to do it 
 again. As you value her good opioion of you, 
 decline to do so. Make any excuse you think 
 best. To carry out the description more com- 
 pletely, lie back in your chair, and smile good- 
 naturedly at her futile efforts. Put on the ex- 
 pression of being amused at seeing her unable 
 to do so simple a thing. As a result she wiU 
 think more of you than ever — i£ possible. 
 
 Don't boast. — The chances, of course, are 
 that you wiU have no occasion to boast ; but 
 in the event of your succeeding by accident, 
 don't wave your arms in the air, or go shouting 
 all over the house, "I've done it, I've done 
 it ! " If you behave in this way your elation 
 win undo you, and no one will believe that you 
 can do it again. Control yourself until you 
 are alone. 
 
214 SHUTTING A MAP. 
 
 Don't speak to the map. — Now we come to 
 the rules which should he observed if you fail. 
 As the chances are forty-nine to one that you 
 will fail, these rules are more important than 
 the others. When you have got the map half 
 folded, you wiU see that there is something 
 wrong. Do not frown at this point, and say, 
 " Confound you, what is the matter with you 
 now ? " The map wiU not answer. It will 
 give you no assistance. You ought at once 
 to reahze that you and it have entered upon a 
 desperate struggle. 
 
 Don't he rude. — You would like to shake it 
 as a terrier shakes a rat; but forbear. You 
 may remember that when you witnessed the 
 illegal contest between Jem Smith and KU- 
 rain they shook hands before trying to kill 
 each other. In the same way you should look 
 as if you had no Ul-will toward the map, even 
 when it is getting the better of you. 
 
 Don't fold it the wrong way. — When you 
 can't discover the right way, don't clench your 
 teeth and fold it by brute force. In this way 
 you can no doubt appear to gain a momentary 
 advantage over it, but your triumph is short- 
 lived. The instant you take your hand off it, 
 
SHUTTING A MAP. 215 
 
 the map springs up, and now, instead of find- 
 ing it convenient for the pocket, you would 
 have some difficulty in packing it away in a 
 sack. 
 
 Don't put your fist through, it. — When you 
 find that it will neither go this way nor that, 
 don't pummel it. Spread it out, and begin 
 again. 
 
 Don't tear it. — ^It is a waste of energy on 
 your part to do this, for it is sure to tear itself. 
 It can be relied upon for this alone. 
 
 Don't kick it round the room. — Though this 
 is a pleasure for the moment, it is not lasting. 
 When you come to yourself you see that the 
 proceeding has been undignified, and, besides, 
 the map is no nearer being folded than ever. 
 You cannot remember too persistently that a 
 map is not to be folded by bullying. On the 
 other hand, you can try kindness if you like. 
 
 Don't deceive yourself into thinking you 
 have done it. — ^Your wife has been wringing 
 her hands in anguish aU the time you have 
 been at it, and is wildly anxious to get you off 
 to bed. It is now midnight. Accordingly, 
 should you double the map up, as if you were 
 making a snowball of it, she will pretend to 
 
216 SHUTTING A MAP. 
 
 think that you have folded it. Don't be' 
 deceived by her. However great the tempta- 
 tion to accept her verdict, remember that you 
 are a man, and have consequently a mind of 
 your own. Have the courage to admit defeat. 
 
 DonH blame your wife. — It is unmanly to 
 remark pointedly that you did it quite easily 
 when she was not by. To imply that she is in 
 league with the map against you is unworthy 
 of a reasoning animal. 
 
 Don't lie. — In other words, if she leaves the 
 room for a moment, don't say you did it while 
 she was out. 
 
 Don't strike your boy. — The boy may snatch 
 it from your hands, and fold it in a moment. 
 There is great provocation in this, but don't 
 yield to it. 
 
 Don't take gloomy views of life. — Your 
 ignominious failure casts a gloom over the 
 household. Fling it off. Don't speak of your 
 expenditure being beyond your income, or of 
 having to sell the piano. Be cheerful ; remem- 
 ber that there is nobler work for you to do 
 than that on which you have squandered an 
 evening, and that nobody can fold maps. 
 
AN INVALID IN LODGINGS. 
 
 A TEUB STORY. 
 
 Until my system collapsed, and my atten- 
 uated form and white face made me an object 
 for looking at, my landlady only spoke of me 
 as her parlor. At intervals I had communi- 
 cated with her through the medium of Sarah 
 Ann, the servant, when she presented her com- 
 pliments (on a dirty piece of paper), and, as her 
 rent was due on Wednesday, could I pay my 
 bill now? Except for these monetary trans- 
 actions, my landlady and I were total strangers, 
 and, though I sometimes fell over her children 
 in the lobby, that led to no intimacy. Even 
 Sarah Ann never opened her mouth to me. 
 She brought in my tea, and left me to discover 
 that it was there. My first day in lodgings I 
 said " Good-morning " to Sarah Ann, and she 
 replied, "Eh?" " Good-morning," I repeated, 
 
218 AN INVALID IN LODGINGS. 
 
 to which she answered contemptuously, " Oh, 
 ay." For six months I was simply the parlor, 
 but then I fell ill, and at once became an in- 
 teresting person. 
 
 Sarah Ann found me shivering on the sofa 
 one hot day a week or more ago, beneath my 
 rug, two coats, and some other articles. Then 
 I ate no dinner, then I drank no tea, and then 
 Sarah Ann mentioned the matter to her mis- 
 tress. My landlady sent up some beef-tea, in 
 which she has a faith that is pathetic, and then 
 to complete the cure she appeared in person. 
 She has proved a nice, motherly old lady, but 
 not cheerful company. 
 
 " Where do you feel it worst, sir ? " she 
 asked. 
 
 I said it was bad aU over, but worst in my 
 head. 
 
 " On your brow ? " 
 
 "No, on the back of my head." 
 
 " It feels like a lump of lead ? " 
 
 " No, hke a furnace." 
 
 " That's just what I feared," she said. " It 
 began so with him." 
 
 "With whom?" 
 
 " My husband. He came in one day, five 
 
AN INVALID IN LODGINGS. 219 
 
 years ago, coi]q)lammg of his head, and in 
 three days he was a corpse." 
 
 "What?" 
 
 " Don't be afraid, sir. Maybe it isn't the 
 same thing." 
 
 " Of course it isn't. Your husband, accord- 
 ing to the story you told me when T took these 
 rooms, died of fever." 
 
 "Yes, but the fever began just in this way. 
 It carried him off in no time. You had better 
 see a doctor, sir. Doctor was no use in my 
 husband's case, but it is a satisfaction to have 
 him." 
 
 Here Sarah Ann, who had been listening 
 with mouth and eyes wide open, suddenly burst 
 into tears, and was led out of the room, exclaim- 
 ing, " Him sech a quiet gentleman, and he 
 never flung nothing at me." Now, for the 
 first time, did I discover that I had touched 
 Sarah Ann's heart. 
 
 Though I knew that I had only caught a 
 nasty cold, a conviction in which the doctor con- 
 firmed me, my landlady stood out for its being 
 just such another case as her husband's, and 
 regaled me for hours with reminiscences of his 
 rapid decline. If I was a little better one day. 
 
220 AN INVALID IN LODGINGS. 
 
 alas ! he had been a little better the day before 
 he died, and if I answered her peevishly she told 
 Sarah Ann that my voice was going. She 
 brought the beef-tea up with her own hand, 
 her countenance saying that I might as well 
 have it, though it could not save me. Some- 
 times I pushed it away untasted (how I loathe 
 beef-tea now !), when she whispered something 
 to Sarah Ann that sent that tender-hearted 
 maid howling once more from the room. 
 
 " He's supped it all," Sarah Ann said, one 
 day, brightening. 
 
 "That's a worse sign," said her mistress, 
 " than i£ he hadn't took none." 
 
 I lay on a sofa, pulled close to the fire, and 
 when the doctor came my landlady was always 
 at his heels, Sarah Ann's dismal face showing 
 at the door. The doctor is a personal friend 
 of my own, and each day he said I was improv- 
 ing a little. 
 
 " Ah, doctor ! " my landlady said, reprov- 
 ingly. 
 
 " He does it for the best," she explained to 
 me, " but I don't hold with doctors as deceive 
 their patients. Why don't he speak out the 
 truth like a man? My husband were told 
 
AN INVALID IN LODGINGS. 221 
 
 the worst, and so he had time to reconcile him- 
 self.' 
 
 On one of these occasions I summoned up 
 sufficient energy to send her out of the room ; 
 but that only made matters worse. 
 
 " Poor gentleman ! " I heard her say to Sarah 
 Ann ; " he is very violent to-day. I saw he 
 were worse the moment I clapped eyes on 
 hun. Sarah Ann, I shouldn't wonder though 
 we had to hold him down yet." 
 
 About an hour afterwards, she came in to 
 ask me if I " had come more round to myself," 
 and when I merely turned roimd on the sofa 
 for reply, she said, in a loud whisper to Sarah 
 Ann, that I " were as quiet as a lamb now." 
 Then she stroked me and went away. 
 
 So attentive was my landlady that she was a 
 ministering angel. Yet I lay on that sofa plot- 
 ting how to get her out of the room. The 
 plan that seemed the simplest was to pretend 
 sleep, but it was not easily carried out. Not 
 getting any answer from me, she would ap- 
 proach on tiptoe and lean over the sofa, listen- 
 ing to hear me breathe. Convinced that I was 
 stiU Uving, she and Sayah Ann began a conversa- 
 tion in whispers, of which I or the deceased hus- 
 
222 AN INVALID IN LODGINGS. 
 
 band was the subject. The husband had slept 
 a good deal, too, and it wasn't a healthy sign- 
 
 " It isn't a good sign," whispered my land- 
 lady, " though them as know no better might 
 think it is. It shows he's getting weaker. 
 When they takes to sleeping in the daytime 
 it's only because they don't have the strength 
 to keep awake." 
 
 " Oh, missus ! " Sarah Ann would say. 
 
 " Better face facts, Sarah Ann," replies my 
 landlady 
 
 In the end I had generally to sit up and 
 confess that I heard what they were saying. 
 My landlady evidently thought this another 
 bad sign. 
 
 I discovered that my landlady held recep- 
 tions in another room, where visitors came who 
 referred to me as her "trial." When she 
 thought me distinctly worse, she put on her 
 bonnet and went out to disseminate the sad 
 news. It was on one of these occasions that 
 Sarah Ann, who had been left in charge of the 
 children, came to me with a serious request. 
 
 " Them children," she said, " want awful to 
 see you, and I sort of promised to bring 'em in, 
 if so you didn't mind." 
 
AN INVALID IN LODGINGS. 223 
 
 " But, Sarah Ann, they have seen me often, 
 and, though I'm a good deal better, I don't feel 
 equal to speaking to them." 
 
 Sarah Ann smiled pityingly when I said I 
 felt better, but she assured me the children only 
 wanted to look at me. I refused her petition, 
 but, on my ultimatum being announced to them, 
 they set up such a roar that, to quiet them, I 
 called them in. 
 
 They came one at a time. Sophia, the eldest, 
 came first. She looked at me very solemnly, 
 and then said bravely that if I liked she would 
 kiss me. As she had a piece of flannel tied 
 round her face, and was swollen in the left 
 cheek, I declined this honor, and she went off 
 much relieved. Next came Tommy, who sent 
 up a shriek as his eyes fell on me, and had to 
 be carried off by Sarah Ann. Johnny was 
 bolder and franker, but addressed all his re- 
 marks to Sarah Ann. First, he wanted to know 
 if he could touch me, and, being told he could, 
 he felt my face all over. Then, he wanted to 
 see the "spouter." The "spouter" was a spray 
 through which Sarah Ann blew coolness on my 
 head, and Johnny had heard of it with inter- 
 est. He refused to leave the room until he 
 
224 AN INVALID IN LODGINGS. 
 
 had been permitted to saturate me and my 
 cushion. 
 
 I am so much better now that even my land- 
 lady knows I am not dying. I suppose she is 
 glad that it is so, but at the same time she re- 
 sents it. She has given up coming to my room, 
 which shows that I have wounded her feelings, 
 and I notice that the beef-tea is no longer so 
 well made. The last time I spoke to her it was 
 I who introduced the subject of her husband, 
 and she spoke of him with a diminution of in- 
 terest. His w^as a real Ulness, she said, with 
 emphasis on the adjective that made me feel I 
 had been drinking beef-tea on false pretenses. 
 
 The children are more openly annoyed. In 
 the innocence of youth they had looked upon 
 me as a sure thing, and had been so " good " 
 for nearly a week that they feel they will never 
 be able to make the lost time up. I under- 
 stand that their mother had to break my re- 
 covery to them gently. 
 
 But Sarah Ann's is the severest blow. For 
 years, Sarah Ann has been a servant in lodging- 
 houses, with nobody and nothing to take any 
 interest in. She has seen many lodgers come 
 and go without knowing who or what they 
 
AN INVALID IN LODGINGS. 225 
 
 were, and she has never had a mistress who 
 thought her of any importance. In these cir- 
 cumstances the neglected one takes, in story- 
 books, to tending a flower in a broken pot, for 
 which she conceives a romantic attachment. 
 The devotion Sarah Ann might have given to 
 a tulip she bestowed on me. For a week I be- 
 lieved she loved me, but only on the under- 
 standing that I was leaving this world behind 
 me. Her interest in me was morbid, but sin- 
 cere. I was the only thing she had ever been 
 given to look after. If I had gone the way of 
 my landlady's husband, I am confident that 
 Sarah Ann would have remembered me for the 
 vphole summer. But it was not to be, and she 
 has not enough spirit to complain. When she 
 conies in to remove the breakfast things and 
 finds that I have eaten two eggs and four slices 
 of toast she says nothing, but I hear her sigh. 
 In the over-mantel 1 see her lookino; at me so 
 reproachfully that I have not the heart to be 
 angry with her. If Sarah Ann's feelings could 
 be analyzed it would be found, I believe, that 
 she looks upon herself as a hopelessly unlucky 
 person doomed to eternal disappointments. In 
 another week's time I expect to be able to go 
 
226 AN INVALID IN LODGINGS. 
 
 to my office as usual, when Sarah Ann and I 
 will again be strangers. Already the children 
 have given up opening my door and peeping in. 
 There is an impression in the house that I am 
 a fraud. They call me by my name as yet, but 
 soon again I will be the parlor. 
 
THE MYSTERY OF TIME-TABLES. 
 
 The history of the time-table is probably 
 this. When the first one was issued, trav- 
 elers accepted it in the spirit in which it was 
 produced : as an amusing puzzle with no 
 solution. By and by they began to tire of the 
 puzzle, and then a clever advertisement (in the 
 form of a paragraph) appeared in the papers 
 declaring that a gentleman (" whose name and 
 address we are not at Uberty to mention") had 
 solved the puzzle, and discovered that time-tables 
 reaUy told you when your train started. This 
 revived interest in the subject ; several persons 
 wrote to the Times, maintaining that time-tables 
 were for use as well as ornament, and, to be. 
 brief, a cry arose that there was more in time- 
 tables than met the eye. One man, who only 
 traveled between London and Bristol, while 
 admittirc: that the time-table was unside down 
 
228 THE MYSTERY OF TIME-TABLES. 
 
 as to that line, held that if he traveled between 
 Manchester and Newcastle he could look up 
 the trains quite easily; a second found that 
 his time-table told him when his train started 
 for Manchester, only it always turned out to 
 be a Sunday train ; and a third declared that 
 the time-table would enable him to catch the 
 train for Scotland were it not for alterations 
 made in the beginning of the month. Soon 
 time-tables were as much a subject of contro- 
 versy as Ibsen is to-day. There were the Table- 
 ites, as they vv^ere called, just as we have the 
 Ibsenites. The Tableites were the out-and-out 
 believers in time-tables, the persons who found 
 a profound meaning in every figure. At first 
 they were few in number, while the Anti- 
 Tableites were many; but the minority were 
 enthusiastic over their discovery, and made a 
 creed of it. They wrote plays and novels in 
 which Tableites married and found the missing 
 will, while the Anti-Tableites were left to die 
 at Waterloo Station, looking vainly for the 
 way out. Of course, the Anti-Tableites re- 
 torted, going so far as to say that time-tables 
 are immoral ; but the great general public is 
 ever greedy of a new thing, and soon Tableism 
 
THE Ml'STERY OF TIME-TABLES. 229 
 
 was the fashion. At the present moment 
 there is hardly a man or woman in the United 
 Kingdom who would dare to say that he or she 
 knows time-tables to be frauds. Yet in what 
 is called our innermost heart we are all aware 
 that time-tables remain a puzzle, and that we 
 only carry them about with us and look know- 
 ingly at them because it is the national form 
 of swaggering. No one can really look up 
 his train in a time-table. 
 
 Then how (the African monarch who is to 
 be the next season's lion might ask) do the 
 great English-speaking people catch their trains, 
 for they certainly do travel a good deal ? You, 
 reader, could answer that question. What is 
 your procedure when you have decided to take 
 a railway journey ? It is this. You say to 
 your wife, quite solemnly, that she had better 
 send out for a new time-table. She says, with 
 equal solemnity, that there is a time-table some- 
 where ; and you reply that you must have a 
 new one, as there are sure to be alterations 
 this month. Then you slip out of the house 
 and proceed to St. Pancras, where you bribe 
 or threaten a porter into telling you when your 
 train starts. Returning home, you find the 
 
230 THE MYSTERY OF TIME-TABLES. 
 
 new time-table lying ready for you, and, as 
 soon as your wife enters, you open it and mutter : 
 " Hem ! Ha ! Very awkward ! Just so ! Have 
 I time to catch the connection at Normanton ? 
 Let me see whether the Great Northern would 
 not suit better," and so on. Finally you say 
 you see that the best train starts at a certain 
 hour. 
 
 Do you believe you have deceived your wife ? 
 Probably you think there is just a chance of 
 her having been taken in. As a matter of fact, 
 she is aware that time-tables are as much a 
 mystery to you as to her, and she knows quite 
 well that you were at St. Pancras an hour ago. 
 But she keeps up the deception. When she 
 married you she knew what men are, and that 
 on the subject of time-tables there must be 
 deceit between man and wife if they are to be 
 happy. The ideal couple keep nothing from 
 each other, save this affair of the time-table, and 
 a wise wife, instead of asking her husband why 
 he occasionally looks as if he had a secret on 
 his mind, will understand that he is only feel- 
 ing guilty of pretending to understand, " See 
 WiUesden Junction k * 2 for Wednesday and 
 Saturday." The perfect bride undertakes at 
 
THE MYSTERY OF TIME-TABLES. 231 
 
 the altar to love, honor, and obey her husband, 
 and pretend to believe that he can look up his 
 train. 
 
 But all wives are not perfect, and one often 
 hears it said of Mr. and Mrs. Such-a-One that 
 they don't get on together. The name usually 
 given to their complaint is incompatibihty of 
 temper, but inquiry, which we have no right to 
 make, would prove four times in five that the 
 wife has been so iU-advised as to challenge her 
 husband's knowledge of time-tables. Men who 
 will endure a great deal from their wives, 
 and go on reading their paper at breakfast 
 quite placidly, fire up at this. It is the one 
 charge they cannot brook ; it takes six inches 
 from the height of a six-footer, and there will 
 be no more happiness in that household until 
 the wife apologizes with tears. A little ex- 
 perience will show her that nothing is to be 
 gained by holding up her husband's one weak- 
 ness to the light, and much by pretending that 
 his skill in reading time-tables is a constant 
 marvel to her. Speak of this skill in company 
 when he is present, and there is nothing your 
 husband wiU deny you. Politicians call each 
 other everything that is bad, and yet one hears 
 
232 THE MYSTERY OF TIME-TABLES. 
 
 now and again that they continue to dine to- 
 gether. The cynical say that this is because 
 politics deadens the conscience, and that seems 
 as good a reason as another. But not even 
 members of Parliament are absolutely hardened. 
 It is notorious that a few of them are not on 
 speaking terms, and that they quarreled over 
 time-tables. " The honorable gentleman is a 
 moral cut-throat, and that is the only moral 
 thing about him." " The honorable and gallant 
 member for Shillelagh is a poltroon," are merely 
 Parliamentary expressions ; but teU a member 
 out of the House that he cannot look up his 
 train in a time-table, and he and you are enemies 
 forever. You cannot bring such a charge 
 against him in the House without being sent to 
 the Clock Tower. 
 
 These are all well-known facts, familiar to 
 every reader, but there is a conspiracy of 
 silence about them. Enter a railway compart- 
 ment, and you find all your fellow-travelers 
 turning over the leaves of their time-table, with 
 the exception, perhaps, of one who has opened 
 his map and is making desperate efforts to 
 close it. You open your time-table, too ; but, 
 instead of pretending to understand it, please 
 
THE MYSTERY OF TIME-TABLES. 233 
 
 look over it at these other humbugs. The man 
 in the corner, who has already asked six porters 
 if this is the train for Doncaster, and is still 
 doubtful, sees your eye on him, and says aloud, 
 " Ha ! I see we reach Doncaster at 5 : 30." 
 The man who is resting his feet on your Glad- 
 stone bag ostentatiously turns down a corner 
 of his time-table to imply that he has found the 
 page. The third man is boldly pretending that 
 he finds the index a help. And so it goes on, 
 and we all do it, and we are a nation of hypo- 
 crites, for not one of us can solve the riddle of 
 the time-tables or find out anything from them, 
 save that all the trains are running in the wrong 
 direction. But why not be open, and admit 
 that the time-tables are a mystery stiU ? 
 
MENDING THE CLOCK. 
 
 It is a little American clock, which I got as 
 a present about two years ago. The donor told 
 me it cost half-a-guinea, but on inquiry at the 
 shop where it was bought (this is what I always 
 do when I get a present), I learned that the 
 real price was four-and-sixpence. Up to this 
 time I had been hesitating about buying a 
 stand for it, but after that I determined not to 
 do so. Since I got it, it has stood on my study 
 mantel-piece, except once or twice at first, when 
 its loud tick compelled me to wrap it up in 
 flannel, and bury it in the bottom of the drawer. 
 Until a fortnight ago my clock went beauti- 
 fully, and I have a feeling that had we treated 
 it a little less hardly it would have continued 
 to go well. One night a fortnight ago it 
 stopped, as if under the impression that I had 
 forgotten to wind it up. I wound it up as far 
 
236 MENDING THE CLOCK. 
 
 as was possible, but after going for an hour it 
 stopped again. Then I shook it, and it went 
 for five minutes. I strode into another room 
 to ask who had been meddling with my clock, 
 but no one had touched it. When I came 
 back it was going again, but as soon as I sat 
 down it stopped. I shook my fist at it, which 
 terrified it into going for half a minute, and 
 then it went creak, creak, like a clock in pain. 
 The last thing it did before stopping finally 
 was to strike nineteen. 
 
 For two days I left my clock serenely alone, 
 nor would I ever have annoyed myself with the 
 thing had it not been for my visitors. I have 
 a soul above mechanics, but when these visitors 
 saw that my clock had stopped they expressed 
 surprise at my not mending it. How different, 
 I must be, they said, from my brother, who 
 had a passion for making himself generally 
 useful. If the clock had been his he would 
 have had it to pieces and put it right within 
 the hour. I pointed out that my mind was so 
 full of weightier matters that I could not 
 descend to clocks, but they had not the brains 
 to see that what prevented my mending the 
 clock was not incapacity, but want of desire to 
 
MENDING THE CLOCK. 237 
 
 do so. This has ever been the worry of my 
 life, that, because I don't do certain things, 
 people take it for granted that I can't do them. 
 I took no prizes at school or college, but you 
 entirely misunderstand me if you think that 
 that was because I could not take them. The 
 fact is, that I had always a contempt for prizes and 
 prizemen, and I have ever been one of the men 
 who gather statistics to prove that it is the boy 
 who sat at the foot of his class that makes his 
 name in after life. I was that boy, and though 
 I have not made my mark in life as yet, I could 
 have done it had I wanted to do so as easily as 
 I could mend a clock. My visitors, judging 
 me by themselves, could not follow this argu- 
 ment, though I have given expression to it in 
 their presence many times, and they were so 
 ridiculous as to say it was apity that my brother 
 did not happen to be at home. 
 
 " Why, what do I need him for ? " I asked, 
 irritably. 
 
 " To mend the clock," they replied, and all 
 the answer I made to them was that if I wanted 
 the clock mended I would mend it myself. 
 
 " But you don't know the way," they said. 
 
 "Do you really think," I asked them, "that 
 
238 MENDING THE CLOCK. 
 
 I am the kind of man to be beaten by a little 
 American clock ? " 
 
 They replied that that was their belief, at 
 which I coldly changed the subject. 
 
 " Are you really going to attempt it ? " they 
 asked, as they departed. 
 
 " Not I," I said ; "I have other things to do." 
 
 Nevertheless the way they flung my brother 
 at me annoyed me, and I returned straight 
 from the door to the study to mend the clock. 
 It amused me to picture their chagrin when 
 they dropped in the next night and found my 
 clock going beautifully. " Who mended it ? " 
 I fancied them asking, and I could not help 
 practicing the careless reply, " Oh, I did it my- 
 self." Then I took the clock in my hands, 
 and sat down to examine it. 
 
 The annoying thing, to begin with, was that 
 there seemed to be no way in. The clock was 
 practically hermetically sealed, for, though the 
 back shook a little when I thumped it on my 
 knee, I could see quite well that the back would 
 not come off unless I broke the mainspring. I 
 examined the clock carefuUy round and round, 
 but to open the thing up was as impossible as to 
 get into an egg without chipping the shell. I 
 
MENDING THE CLOCK. 239 
 
 twisted and twirled it, but nothing would move. 
 Then I raged at the idiots who made clocks 
 that would not open. My mother came in 
 about that time to ask me how I was getting on. 
 
 " Getting on with what ? " I asked. 
 
 " With the clock," she said. 
 
 " The clock," I growled, " is nothing to me," 
 for it irritated me to hear her insinuating that 
 I had been foiled. 
 
 " But I thought you were trying to mend 
 it," she said. 
 
 " Not at all," I replied ; " I have something 
 else to do." 
 
 " What a pity," she said, " that Andrew is 
 not here." 
 
 Andrew is the brother they are always fling- 
 ing at me. 
 
 " He could have done nothing," I retorted, 
 " for the asses made this clock not to open." 
 
 "I'm sure it opens," my mother said. 
 
 "Why should you be sure? " I asked, fiercely. 
 
 " Because," she explained, " I never saw or 
 heard of a clock that doesn't open." 
 
 " Then," I snarled, "you can both see and 
 hear of it now" — and I pointed contemptuously 
 at my clock. 
 
240 MENDING THE CLOCK. 
 
 She shook her head as she went out, and as 
 soon as the door shut I hit the clock with my 
 clenched fist (stunning my fourth finger). I 
 had a presentiment that my mother was right 
 about the clock's opening, and I feared that 
 she still labored under the delusion that I had 
 been trying to mend the exasperating thing. 
 
 On the following day we had a visit from my 
 friend Summer, and he had scarcely sat down 
 in my study when he jumped up, exclaiming, 
 " HuUo, is that the right time ? " 
 
 I said to him that the clock had stopped, and 
 he immediately took it on his knees. I looked 
 at him sideways, and saw at once that he was 
 the kind of man who knows about clocks. 
 After shaking it he asked me what was wrong. 
 
 " It needs cleaning," I said at a venture, for 
 if I had told him the whole story he might have 
 thought that I did not know how to mend a 
 clock. 
 
 " Then you have opened it and examined 
 the works ? " he asked, and not to disappoint 
 him, I said yes. 
 
 " If it needs cleaning, why did you not clean 
 it ? " was his next question. 
 
 I hate inquisitiveness in a man, but I replied 
 
MENDING THE CLOCK. 241 
 
 that I had not had time to clean it. He turned 
 it round in his hands, and I knew what he was 
 looking for before he said : 
 
 " I have never taken an American clock to 
 pieces. Does it open in the ordinary way ? " 
 
 This took me somewhat aback, but Summer, 
 being my guest, had to be answered. 
 
 " Well," I said, cautiously, " it does and it 
 doesn't." 
 
 He looked at it again, and then held it out 
 to me, saying : " You had better open it your- 
 self, seeing that you know the way." 
 
 There was a clock in the next room, and 
 such a silence was there in my study after that 
 remark that I could distinctly hear it ticking. 
 
 " Curiously unsettled weather," I said. 
 
 " Very," he answered. " But let me see 
 how you get at the works of the clock." 
 
 " The fact is," T said, " that I don't want 
 this clock mended ; it ticks so loudly that it 
 disturbs me." 
 
 " Never mind," Summer said, " about that. 
 I should like to have a look at its internals, 
 and then we can stop it if you want to do 
 so." 
 
 Summer talked in a light way, and I was by 
 
242 MENDING THE CLOCK. 
 
 no means certain whether, once it was set 
 agoing, the clock could be stopped so easily as 
 he thought, but he was evidently determined 
 to get inside. 
 
 " It is a curious little clock," I said to him; 
 " a sort of puzzle, indeed, and it took me ten 
 minutes to discover how to open it myself. 
 Suppose you try to find out the way ? " 
 
 " AU right," Summer said, and then he tried 
 to remove the glass. 
 
 " The glass doesn't come off, does it ? " he 
 asked. 
 
 " I'm not going to tell you," I replied. 
 
 " Stop a bit, " said Summer, speaking to him- 
 self ; " is it the feet that screw out ? " 
 
 It had never struck me to try the feet ; but 
 I said : " Find out for yourself." 
 
 I sat watching with more interest than he 
 gave me credit for, and very soon he had both 
 the feet out ; then he unscrewed the ring at 
 the top, and then the clock came to pieces. 
 
 " I've done it," said Summer. 
 
 " Yes,'' I said, " but you have been a long 
 time about it." 
 
 He examined the clock with a practiced eye, 
 and then — 
 
MENDING THE CLOCK. 243 
 
 " It doesn't seem to me," he said, " to be 
 requiring cleaning." 
 
 A less cautious man than myself would have 
 weakly yielded to the confidence of this asser- 
 tion, and so have shown that he did not know 
 about clocks. 
 
 " Oh, yes, it does," I said, in a decisive tone. 
 
 " Well," he said, " we had better clean it." 
 
 " I can't be bothered cleaning it," I repHed, 
 " but, if you hke, you can clean it." 
 
 " Are they cleaned in the ordinary way, those 
 American clocks ? " he asked. 
 
 " Well," I said, " they are and they aren't." 
 
 " How should I clean it, then ? " he asked. 
 
 " Oh, in the ordinary way," I replied. 
 
 Summer proceeded to clean it by blowing at 
 the wheels, and after a time he said, " We'U 
 try it now." 
 
 He put it together again, and then wound it 
 up, but it would not go. 
 
 " There is something else wrong with it," 
 he said. 
 
 " We have not cleaned it properly," I ex- 
 plained. 
 
 " Clean it yourself," he replied, and flung 
 out of the house. 
 
244 MENDING THE CLOCK. 
 
 After he had gone I took up the clock to 
 see how he had opened it, and to my surprise 
 it began to go. I laid it down triumphantly. 
 At last I had mended it. When Summer came 
 in an hour afterwards he exclaimed — 
 
 " Hullo, it's going." 
 
 " Yes," I said, " I put it to rights after you 
 went out." 
 
 " How did you do it ? " he asked. 
 
 " I cleaned it properly," I replied. 
 
 As I spoke I was leaning against the mantel- 
 piece, and I heard the clock beginning to make 
 curious sounds. I gave the mantel-piece a 
 shove with my elbow, and the clock went all 
 right again. Summer had not noticed. He 
 remained in the room for half-an-hour, and all 
 that time I dared not sit down. Had I not 
 gone on shaking the mantel-piece the clock 
 would have stopped at any moment. When 
 he went at last I fell thankfully into a chair, 
 and the clock had stopped before he was half 
 way down the stairs. I shook it and it went 
 for five minutes, and then stopped. I shook 
 it again, and it went for two minutes. I shook 
 it, and it went for half a minute. I shook it, 
 and it did not go at all. 
 
MENDING THE CLOCK. 245 
 
 The day was fine, and my study window 
 stood open. In a passion I seized hold of that 
 clock and flung it fiercely out into the garden. 
 It struck against the trunk of a tree, and fell 
 into a flower-bed. Then I stood at the window 
 sneering at it, when suddenly I started. I have 
 mentioned that it has a very loud tick. Surely 
 I heard it ticking! I ran into the garden. 
 The clock was going again ! Concealing it 
 beneath my coat I brought it back to the study, 
 and since then it has gone beautifully. Every- 
 body is delighted except Summer, who is 
 naturally a little annoyed. 
 
THE BIGGEST BOX IN THE WORLD. 
 
 The largest ship the seas have ever seen was 
 not, as is generally held, the Great Eastern. 
 It was the vessel in which William the Con- 
 queror came over to England, bringing the 
 ancestors of so many people with him. One 
 thinks of this enormous ship when looking 
 about him for anything with which to compare 
 Glengarry's box. As William's ship is to 
 other ships, so is Glengarry's box to all other 
 boxes. 
 
 Glengarry is a medical in his ninth year. 
 He has a romantic notion that he could really 
 study if he had the proper surroundings. He 
 finds that the sharp corners of a square room 
 are against concentration, and that long rooms 
 are depressing, and round rooms too exhilarat- 
 ing. In quest of the room that would suit him 
 he changes his lodgings every month or so, but 
 
248 THE BIGGEST BOX IN THE WORLD. 
 
 though his cab, with a ton of luggage on the 
 top of it, and bags falling off the seat, is now 
 a familiar sight in most Edinburgh streets, 
 Glengarry has never yet come upon a room 
 that has proved a real help. 
 
 It will already be seen why Glengarry began 
 to think by day and night of a big box. He 
 did not want it to study in, but to hold his 
 things in, as he passed from one temporary 
 home to another. In nine years he had accu- 
 mulated a great many suits of clothes, and these 
 Glengarry had to drag after him from lodging 
 to lodging. In his passionate desire to become 
 a doctor he has now hundreds of note-books, 
 most of them left him by men who have got 
 round the examiners ; and at the University, 
 where such things are talked of with bated 
 breath, he is reputed to have the only complete 
 collection of cribs and keys in Edinburgh. 
 His rooms are thus a favorite resort. 
 
 After Glengarry had packed all his belong- 
 ings, as he fondly thought, he usually discovered 
 that he had forgotten the six volumes in manu- 
 script entitled " How to Get the Soft Side of 
 Turner," or twelve pairs of boots, or three old 
 coats, or something else, and then the straps had 
 
THE BIGGEST BOX IN THE WORLD. 249 
 
 to be taken off his boxes again when the lid 
 jumped up, exploding the contents in all direc- 
 tions. Thus the idea of a box sufficiently gigan- 
 tic to hold everything took possession of Glen- 
 garry to such an extent that he could almost 
 have passed an examination in it. 
 
 Rumors that the box had been contracted 
 for were passed from mouth to mouth at the 
 University three months ago. These were at 
 first scouted, as big undertakings — the Channel 
 Tunnel, for instance — usually are ; but it was 
 noticed that Glengarry often wore a preoccu- 
 pied look now, and was absenting himself 
 from his classes even more frequently than 
 usual. When asked to stand for the Students' 
 Council he said that he had something else in 
 his eye at present. Some thought that he re- 
 ferred to a scheme for writing the answers to all 
 possible medical questions on his shirt-sleeves, 
 but he was really thinking of the box. It was 
 by this time in course of construction, the 
 plans being Glengarry's own. 
 
 At that time Glengarry was living in Fred- 
 erick Street, at the top of the house. The room 
 was of such remarkable construction that it could 
 not be classified, and when he took it he thought 
 
250 THE BIGGEST BOX IN THE WORLD. 
 
 he had got what he was after at last. Bitter 
 disappointment awaited him, however, for the 
 wind howled up there aU day long, and he can- 
 not study in wind. He was anxious, too, to try 
 his new box as soon as possible, so he engaged 
 another room in Cumberland Street, where there 
 was said to be no wind. 
 
 The night before Glengarry was to leave 
 Frederick Street he sat waiting for his box as 
 impatiently as though it were a letter in an an- 
 gular hand. By this time he would, on former 
 occasions, have been damp with perspiration, 
 caused by his efforts to get all his things into 
 three small boxes and five Gladstone bags. He 
 would have been sitting on the boxes in wild 
 attempts to close them, finding after they were 
 closed that a coat sleeve was sticking out, or 
 that the bootjack had taken advantage of some 
 moment when he had his back to it, to leap out 
 of a bag and hide beneath the table. His feet 
 would have been catching in waistcoats which 
 he could have sworn were at the bottom of box 
 2, and he would have had a presentiment that 
 he had forgotten to pack his " Guide to the 
 Ways of Giaiager Stewart." Even after the 
 boxes were so full that the locks refused to 
 
THE BIGGEST BOX IN THE WORLD. 251 
 
 work, and the Gladstone bags were of new and 
 strange shapes, looking Hke animals whose bones 
 wanted to burst the skin, he would have had to 
 make up brown paper parcels, out of which 
 books, brushes, and photograph frames would 
 fall as he carried them down the stair. But 
 the box was coming, and Glengarry smoked, 
 and chuckled at the surprise he would give 
 his things directly. 
 
 Glengarry was in this pleasing frame of mind, 
 as exultant as if a message had come asking 
 him to cut off a magistrate's leg, when the bell 
 rang. He tried not to look proud, but listened 
 eagerly to make sure that his landlady had 
 gone to the door. His landlady finished her 
 supper and put her children to bed, and then 
 remembered that the bell had been ringing 
 for some time. Soon afterwards she informed 
 Glengarry that two men wanted to see him, 
 also that they were using language. Glengarry 
 waved his hand grandly, and told her to show 
 them in. 
 
 " I suppose you have brought the box ? " 
 Glengarry said. 
 
 They said they had, and they wanted to 
 know what they were to do with it. 
 
252 THE BIGGEST BOX IN THE WOULD. 
 
 " Bring it in here," said Glengarry. 
 
 " We can't get it up the stair." 
 
 " What ? It can't be heavy with nothing 
 in it." 
 
 " No, but it's too big. If you want it up 
 here you'll have to widen the passage." 
 
 Glengarry's pipe went out at this, and he 
 said falteringly that he would come down and 
 have a look at the box. When he saw it in aU 
 its magnitude, the box staggered him. 
 
 " Perhaps it could be got into your room by 
 the window," one of the men said ; " but you 
 would have to take the window out first." 
 
 " And you would need a crane," said the 
 other man, " to lift it up." 
 
 Glengarry measured the passage, and saw 
 that the leviathan box could never enter it. 
 
 " Can you leave the box here all night ? " 
 he asked. 
 
 " You would be run in if we did that," the 
 men said. 
 
 There was, therefore, nothing for it but to 
 bribe them to take the box away again. 
 
 " Bring it back early in the morning," 
 Glengarry said, " before there is much traffic. 
 rt might frighten the horses." 
 
THE BIGGEST BOX IN THE WORLD. 253 
 
 " They would take it for a steara tram," said 
 the men. 
 
 That night Glengarry stole into Cumber- 
 land Street with a string, and measured the 
 passage that led to his new lodgings. The 
 passage was wide enough to admit the box. 
 
 On the following evening two other medi- 
 cals. Smith (seventh year) and Flint (sixth 
 year), called at Cumberland Street as a deputa- 
 tion from the medical faculty, who wanted to 
 know about the box. They were shown into 
 Glengarry's new abode, and Glengarry wel- 
 comed them nervously. 
 
 " It looks like a good room for working in," 
 said Smith, who always thinks he could work in 
 other people's rooms, " but where is the box?" 
 
 " You don't mean to say that you don't see 
 it ? " asked Glengarry. 
 
 Smith and Flint looked round the room, and 
 their eyes rested on what they had taken for a 
 monster cupboard. 
 
 " Is it in there ? " asked Flint. 
 
 " In there ! " cried Glengarry, indignantly ; 
 " that is it." 
 
 " What ? " 
 
 " The box." 
 
254 THE BIGGEST BOX IN THE WORLD. 
 
 " I took it for a bedroom," said Flint. 
 
 " It is more like a cabmen's shelter," said 
 Smith. 
 
 When the visitors had come to, they wanted 
 to know how the box was brought from Fred- 
 erick Street, but at first Glengarry refused to 
 gratify their curiosity. He was in need of 
 sympathy, however, and gradually they got the 
 story out of him. 
 
 Though the box had arrived at Frederick 
 Street early in the morning, a crowd soon 
 gathered round it, owing to an absurd rumor 
 that it was to be erected as a house for the band 
 in Princes Street Gardens. Glengarry had to 
 carry all his things down to the box, and pack it 
 there, and then the story went out that it was a 
 furniture van. When the boys realized that the 
 " show," as they termed it, belonged to Glen- 
 garry, they studied him as he packed, and for a 
 time their gaze was reverent. Becoming used 
 to the idea, however, they took to jumping over 
 the box (and into it when the owner was on his 
 way up or downstairs) ; to show that they ap- 
 preciated the magnitude of his labors they 
 gave three ringing cheers every time he ap- 
 peared with another load. 
 
THE BIGGEST BOX IN THE WOULD. 255 
 
 Glengarry in liis excitement was so fooKsh 
 as to think that the box could be conveyed to 
 Cumberland Street on a cab, but the cabmen 
 whom he hailed gave him a piece o£ their mind. 
 At last a lorry was got, and the box was raised 
 upon it by six men, amid loud applause from 
 the boys, who insisted on following the lorry 
 to Cumberland Street, sadly and solemnly, as 
 if they were walking in a funeral procession. 
 Men and boys joined the crowd, as the fame 
 of the box spread, and when it arrived at its 
 destination all Cumberland Street was in a com- 
 motion. 
 
 The box was got into the passage and there 
 it stood. 
 
 " Turn it on its side," cried Glengarry, but 
 it would not turn. 
 
 " PuU it back," was his next suggestion, but 
 it would not puU back. 
 
 The six men sat down on the steps and wiped 
 their brows, and the boys danced with honest 
 glee. Lodgers going out found their way 
 blocked by the box, and had to cHmb over it. 
 A lady who had been leaving tracts had to go 
 up the stairs again and sit in some kitchen for 
 an hour. 
 
256 THE BIGGEST BOX IN THE WORLD. 
 
 The policeman came and said : 
 
 " Come, you know, this won't do," and then 
 strolled away. 
 
 Glengarry's new landlady apologized to all 
 the people on the stairs for having allowed 
 Glengarry to have the back parlor. She also 
 warned Glengarry that if the box was brought 
 ■up it would probably kill the people below. 
 
 A man on the opposite side of the street 
 opened his window and shouted directions. 
 
 " Break the lid or the door of the thing," he 
 (cried, " carry up its contents in your arms." 
 
 Unfortunately the box was lying on its lid, 
 ;and so the suggestion was not practical. At 
 last the six men disappeared and came back 
 "with an axe. With this, one made a way into 
 tthe box, and the boys shouted gleefully once 
 imore as they heard the axe smashing Glen- 
 ;garry's pictures. 
 
 AH forenoon Glengarry was carrying up arm- 
 fuls of books, boots, and clothing, and then 
 the box itself was carried up. Glengarry 
 grudged the money he had to pay those six 
 men until the bill for the box came in, when he 
 saw that the men had been ^heap in compari- 
 son. 
 
THE BIGGEST BOX IN THE WORLD. 257 
 
 The box and Glengarry are in Cumberland 
 Street stiU. Glengarry would have tried new 
 rooms long ago if he could have left the box 
 behind him, but the landlady refuses to accept it. 
 The room is utterly unsuitable for worldng in, 
 Glengarry not being able to work where there 
 is no wind, and, consequently, he does not mean 
 to go in for his final this year. His friends 
 have suggested that the box might prove use- 
 ful at an exhibition, not as an exhibit, but as a 
 stall. Another suggestion is that the Senatus 
 could put the Brewster statue in it at the time 
 of the rectorial election. 
 
 17 
 
THE COMING DRAMATIST. 
 
 Shakespeare has three plays on the London 
 stage at present, and several companies in the 
 " provinces," where Sheridan, too, is holding up 
 his head. This is even better than Mr. Pettitt, 
 and has set those who write about the theatre 
 a-talldng. The manager who produces Shakes- 
 pearean pieces gets a certificate of character from 
 the critics, and theatre-goers are given to under- 
 stand that he is a public benefactor. He has 
 " the best interests of the stage at heart," and 
 you ought to clap your hands when you look 
 at him. So they say, but it is only a manner 
 of talking. The manager who invites the pop- 
 ulace to see himself as Hamlet in reduced circum- 
 stances, or his "wife in Lady Teazle's dresses, is 
 usually a greater bore than the comic person 
 with red nose for trade-mark, or the melodra- 
 matic hero in a prologue and five acts. Even 
 
260 th:e coming dramatist. 
 
 when Shakespeare is efficiently presented, there 
 is no reason why we should exult over the fact, 
 as if each of the players merited a medal for 
 doing the best for himself ; nor need we at once 
 begin to argue that the prospects of the theatre 
 are brightening. The old playwrights are pop- 
 ular with actors because of reasons that are 
 quite creditable, but not specially inspiring. 
 It is pleasant to feel that you are looked upon 
 as some one to honor the moment you produce 
 a Shakespearean play, and " Fame " being what 
 the actor murmurs to himself as he walks along 
 the streets, he naturally hkes to appear in the 
 parts that give him his best opportunity. Ham- 
 let is his favorite character when he is his 
 own manager, because it is the longest part in 
 Shakespeare. Another weighty reason is that 
 you can play the old dramatists for nothing. 
 Thus, though one is always glad to see actors 
 ambitious of great parts, it is not necessary to 
 extol them otherwise than for their acting. Mr. 
 Irving has, no doubt, done more for the stage 
 than any other living man, but only in the way 
 of showing that Shakespeare in magnificent 
 upholstery need not speU bankruptcy. By far 
 the healthiest sign of the stage would be the 
 
THM COMING DRAMATIST. 261 
 
 appearance of new playwrights of distinction, 
 and Mr. Irving seems to have given up look- 
 ing for them. Obviously they are hard to find, 
 but the actor or manager who discovers even 
 one will have done better for the stage than 
 those who revise Shakespeare to the end of their 
 days. 
 
 That we should have no living playwrights 
 to speak of is assuredly remarkable, for the 
 demand is great : the rewards are such as to 
 dwarf the honors attainable by noveUsts, poets, 
 or essayists, and the pecuniary remuneration for 
 a single successful play means a bank account 
 forever. Miss Gubbins, author of the famous 
 novel Ifer Fourth Husband, produces a siUy 
 play at a matinee, and every prominent daily 
 paper in the country has half a column about 
 it next morning. Mr. Wigley adapts the latest 
 Ambiguous Comic piece, and sells the rights 
 for five or ten thousand pounds. After that 
 he is interviewed whithersoever his triumphal 
 progress takes him, and London correspondents 
 telegraph to Australia that he sometimes wears 
 a white waistcoat. In short, the newspaper 
 editors, who know what they are about, think 
 that theatrical intelligence must be given in full, 
 
262 THE COMING DRAMATIST. 
 
 though important hooks have to wait for notice 
 until Parhament rises. Such interest in the 
 drama ought to produce a dramatist, but we 
 have none of parts to be compared with, say, 
 our eight or ten leading novelists. Mr. Gilbert 
 is a wit when he is set to music, but his latest 
 effort, Brantinghame Hall, was duU and trivial, 
 and only proved that a proper playwright is not 
 necessarily a playwright proper. Mr. Pinero 
 has always been unsuccessful when he was in 
 the least ambitious, farce being what suits him 
 best, and his " dramas " or " comedies " being 
 ever a curious mixture of comedy, farce, and 
 " serious interest." Mr. Grundy is a smaller 
 Pinero, and the melodramatists are to be for- 
 gotten as soon as possible. We do not nowa- 
 days even have the secret of burlesque, for our 
 burlesques burlesque nothing, and are only 
 music-haU entertainments, in which many ladies 
 are the scenery, whUe agile gentlemen play the 
 fool at twenty or fifty pounds a week. At this 
 moment London is looking forward to seeing a 
 comedian from the music halls turning Lancelot 
 into ridicule. A few comic songs from the 
 vulgar palaces that are now so fashionable in 
 London will probably make this latest " bur- 
 
THE COMING DRAMATIST. 2G3 
 
 lesque" run for hundreds of nights. In Edin- 
 burgh the interest Londoners have in their music 
 halls is not easily realized, though it is one of 
 the worst signs of the times. The other night 
 there was a disturbance in a London music hall 
 over a comic political song, and since then in- 
 numerable " leaders " have solemnly discussed 
 the question of politics in places of amusement. 
 As a matter of fact, actors know nothing about 
 the questions of the day. Not one in fifty 
 records his vote in a Parliamentary election. 
 Their politics are that Mr. Gladstone is the 
 G. 0. M., and that Lord Randolph Churchill 
 curls his mustache. 
 
 In speaking of the theater of to-day, never- 
 theless, a pessimistic tone is uncalled for. The 
 stage has been swept of many of its objection- 
 able features, and the standard of acting has 
 been immeasurably raised. If we have no 
 one theater where the performance is of such 
 uniform excellence as at one famous Paris play- 
 house, we have more actors and actresses of in- 
 telligence than Eny other country in the world. 
 When the dramatist appears, scores of com- 
 panies wiU be found capable of acting his pieces 
 satisfactorily. Nor do we fear that he would 
 
264 THE COMING DRAMATIST. 
 
 be unappreciated. Trash is often a success on 
 the stage, thanks to the talent of one or two 
 of the players ; but the average audience rec- 
 ognizes good work, and would rejoice to have 
 the opportunity of commending it. All that is 
 wanted is the dramatist. One would think that 
 there are novelists now with us who could write 
 plays that would be literary as well as effective. 
 Some of them have tried and failed, but ob- 
 viously because they did not set about it in the 
 proper way. Plays and novels require quite 
 different construction, but the story-writer who 
 is dramatic could become sufficiently theatrical 
 by serving a short apprenticeship to the stage. 
 There are such prizes to pluck for those who 
 can stand on tiptoe that the absence of an out- 
 standing dramatist is as surprising as it is di§* 
 appointing. 
 
IT. 
 
 As they were my friends, I don't care to say 
 how it came about that I had this strange and, 
 I beheve, unique experience. They considered 
 it a practical joke, though it nearly unhinged 
 my reason. Suffice it that last Wednesday, 
 when I called on them at their new house, I 
 was taken upstairs and shown into a large room 
 with a pictorial waU-paper. There was a pop- 
 gun on the table and a horse with three legs on 
 the floor. In a moment it flashed through my 
 mind that I must be in a nursery. I started 
 back, and then, with a sinking at the heart, 
 I heard the key turn in the lock. From the 
 corner came a strange uncanny moan. Slowly 
 I forced my head round and looked, and a 
 lump rose in my throat, and I realized that I 
 was alone with It. 
 
 I cannot say how long I stood there motion- 
 
266 IT. 
 
 less. As soon as I came to myself I realized 
 that my only chance was to keep quiet. I tried 
 to think. The probability was that they were 
 not far away, and if they heard nothing for a 
 quarter of an hour or so, they might open the 
 door and let me out. So I stood still, with my 
 eyes riveted on the thing where It lay. It 
 did not cry out again, and I hoped against hope 
 that It had not seen me. As I became accus- 
 tomed to the room I heard It breathing quite 
 like a human being. This reassured me to 
 some extent, for I saw that It must be asleep. 
 The question was, Might not the sleep be dis- 
 turbed at any moment, and in that case, what 
 should I do ? I remembered the story of the 
 man who met a wild beast in the jungle and 
 subjugated it by the power of the human eye. 
 I thought I would try that. All the time I kept 
 glaring at Its lair (for I could not distinguish 
 itself), and the two things mixed themselves up 
 in my mind till I thought I was trying the ex- 
 periment at that moment. Next it struck me 
 that perhaps the whole thing was a mistake. 
 The servant had merely shown me into the 
 wrong room. Yes ; but why had the door been 
 locked? After aU, was I sure that it was 
 
IT. 267 
 
 locked ? I crept closer to the door, and with 
 my eyes still fixed on the corner, put my hand 
 gently — oh, so gently ! — on the handle. Softly 
 I turned it round. I felt Hke a hurglar. The 
 door would not open. Losing all self-control, 
 I shook it ; and then again came that unnatural 
 cry. I stood as if turned to stone, still clutch- 
 ing the door-handle, lest it should squeak if I 
 let it go. Then I listened for the breathing. 
 In a few moments I heard it. Before it had 
 horrified me ; now it was like sweet music, and 
 I resumed breathing myself. I kept close to 
 the wall, ready for anything ; and then I had 
 a strange notion. As It was asleep, why should 
 I not creep forward and have a look at it ? I 
 yielded to this impulse. 
 
 Of course I had often seen Them before, but 
 always with some responsible person present, 
 and never such a young one. I thought it 
 would be done up in clothes, but no, it lay 
 loose, and without much on. I saw its hands 
 and arms, and it had hair. It was sound 
 asleep to all appearances, but there was a 
 queer smile upon its face that I did not Uke. 
 It crossed my mind that It might be only 
 shamming, so I looked away and then turned 
 
268 IT. 
 
 sharply round to catch it. The smile was still 
 there, but It moved one of its hands in a 
 suspicious way. The more I looked, the more 
 uncomfortable did that smile make me. There 
 was something saturnine about it, and it kept 
 it up too long. I felt in my pocket hurriedly 
 for my watch, in case It should wake ; but, 
 with my usual ill-luck, I had left it at the 
 watchmaker's. If It had been older I should 
 not have minded so much, for I would have 
 kept on asking what its name was. But this 
 was such a very young one that it could not 
 even have a name yet. Presently I began to 
 feel that It was lying too quietly. It is not 
 Their nature to be quiet for any length of 
 time, and, for aught I knew, this one might be 
 ill. I believe I should have felt reHeved i£ It 
 had cried out again. After thinking it over 
 for some time I touched It, to see if It would 
 move. It drew up one leg and pushed out a 
 hand. Then I bit my lips at my foUy, for 
 there was no saying what It might do next. I 
 got behind the curtam, and watched it anxiously 
 through a chink. Except that the smile be- 
 came wickeder than ever, nothing happened. 
 I was wondering whether I should not risk 
 
IT. 269 
 
 pinching It, so as to make it scream and bring 
 somebody, when I heard an awful sound. 
 Though I am only twenty, I have had consid- 
 erable experience of life, and I can safely say 
 that I never heard such a chuckle. It had 
 wakened up and was laughing. 
 
 I gazed at It from behind the curtain: its 
 eyes were wide open, and you could see quite 
 well that it was reflecting what it ought to do 
 next. As long as it did not come out I felt 
 safe, for it could not see me. Something 
 funny seemed to strike it, and it laughed 
 heartily. After a time It tried to sit up. Fort- 
 unately its head was so heavy that it always 
 lost its balance just as it seemed on the point 
 of succeeding. When It saw that It could 
 not rise. It reflected again, and then all of a 
 sudden It put its fist into its mouth. I gazed 
 in horror ; soon only the wrist was to be seen, 
 and I saw that it would choke in another 
 minute. Just for a second I thought that I 
 would let It do as It hked. Then I cried out, 
 " Don't do that ! " and came out from behind 
 the curtain. Slowly It removed its fist, and 
 there we were, looking at each other. 
 
 I retreated to the door, but it followed me 
 
270 IT. 
 
 with its eyes. It had not had tiiflfe to scream 
 yet, and I glared at It to imply that I would 
 stand no nonsense. But, difficult though this 
 may be to believe, it didn't scream when It had 
 the chance. It chuckled instead, and made 
 signs to me to come nearer. This was even 
 more alarming than my worst fears. I shook 
 my head and then my fist at It, but It only 
 laughed the niore. In the end I got so fear- 
 ful that I went down on my hands and knees, 
 to get out of its sight. Then It began to 
 scream. However, I did not get up. When 
 they opened the door they say I was beneath " 
 the table, and no wonder. But I certainly 
 was astonished to discover that I had only been 
 alone with It for seven minutes. 
 
 THE END. 
 
The Works of J. M. Barrie. 
 
 The Little Minister. 
 
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