The Life of Mansie Wauch

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"What think ye should come next?" quo' Thomas drily.

"I'm sure I dinna ken," answered I.

"Weel," said he, "I'll tell--but where was I at?"

"Ou, at the observe of Lovetenant Todrick, or what they caa'd him, about
the tripe; and the answer of Duncan MacAlpine on that head, 'That ilka
man has his ain taste.'"

"'Vera true,' said Lovetenant Todrick, 'but lift it out a'thegither on
that dish, till I get my specs on; for never since I was born, did I ever
see before boiled tripe with buttons and button-holes intill't.'"

At this I set up a loud laughing, which I could not help, though it was
like to split my sides; but Thomas Burlings bade me whisht till I heard
him out.

"'Buttons and button-holes!' quo' Duncan MacAlpine. 'Look again, wi' yer
specs; for ye're surely wrang, Lovetenant Todrick.'

"'Buttons and button-holes! and 'deed I am surely right, Duncan,'
answered the Lovetenant Todrick, taking his specs deliberately off the
brig o' his nose, and faulding them thegither, as he put them first into
his shagreen case, and syne into his pocket--'Howsomever, Duncan
MacAlpine, I'll pass ye ower for this time, gif ye take my warning, and
for the future ware your pay-money on wholesome butcher's meat, like a
Christian, and no be trying to delude your ain stamick, and your
offisher's een, by holding up, on a fork, such a heathenish mak-up for a
dish, as the leg of a pair o' buckskin breeches!'"

"Buckskin breeches!" said I; "and did he really and actually boil siccan
trash to his dinner?"

"Nae sae far south as that yet, friend," answered Thomas. "Duncan was
not so bowed in the intellect as ye imagine, and had some spice of
cleverality about his queer manoeuvres.--Eat siccan trash to his dinner!
Nae mair, Mansie, than ye intend to eat that iron guse ye're rinning
along that piece claith; but he wanted to make his offishers believe that
his pay gaed the right way: like the Pharisees of old that keepit
praying, in ell-lang faces, about the corners of the streets, and gaed
hame wi' hearts full of wickedness and a' manner of cheatrie."

"And what way did his pay gang, then?" asked I; "and how did he live?"

"I telled ye before, frien," answered Thomas, "that he was a deboshed
creature; and, like ower mony in the world, likit weel what didna do him
ony good. It's a wearyfu' thing that whisky. I wish it could be
banished to Botany Bay.

"It is that," said I. "Muckle and nae little sin does it breed and
produce in this world."

"I'm glad," quoth Thomas, stroking down his chin in a slee way, "I'm glad
the guilty should see the folly o' their ain ways; it's the first step,
ye ken, till amendment;--and indeed I tell't Maister Wiggie, when he sent
me here, that I could almost become guid for your being mair wary of your
conduct for the future time to come."

This was like a thunder-clap to me, and I did not know for a jiffie what
to feel, think, or do, more than perceiving that it was a piece of
devilish cruelty on their parts, taking things on this strict. As for
myself, I could freely take sacred oath on the Book, that I had not had a
dram in my head for four months before; the knowledge of which made my
corruption rise like lightning, as a man is aye brave when he is
innocent; so, giving my pow a bit scart, I said briskly, "So ye're after
some session business in this visit, are ye?"

"Ye've just guessed it," answered Thomas Burlings, sleeking down his
front hair with his fingers in a sober way; "we had a meeting this
forenoon; and it was resolved ye should stand a public rebuke in the
meeting-house on Sunday next."

"Hang me, if I do!" answered I, thumping my nieve down with all my might
on the counter, and throwing back my cowl behind me into a corner. "No,
man!" added I, snapping with great pith my finger and thumb in. Thomas's
eyes, "not for all the ministers and elders that ever were cleckit! They
may do their best; and ye may tell them so, if ye like. I was born a
free man; I live in a free country; I am the subject of a free king and
constitution; and I'll be shot before I submit to such rank, diabolical
papistry."

"Hooly and fairly," quoth Thomas, staring a wee astonished like, and not
a little surprised to see my birse up in this manner; for, when he
thought upon shearing a lamb, he found he had catched a tartar; so,
calming down as fast as ye like, he said, "Hooly and fairly, Mansie," (or
Maister Wauch, I believe, he did me the honour to call me,) "they'll
maybe no be sae hard as they threaten. But ye ken, my friend, I'm
speaking to ye as a brither; it was an unco-like business for an elder,
not only to gang till a play, which is ane of the deevil's rendevouses,
but to gang there in a state of liquor: making yoursell a world's
wonder--and you an elder of our kirk!! I put the question to yourself
soberly."

His threatening I could despise, and could have fought, cuffed, and
kicked with all the ministers and elders of the General Assembly, to say
nothing of the Relief Synod and the Burgher Union, before I would have
demeaned myself to yield to what my inward spirit plainly told me to be
rank cruelty and injustice; but ah! his calm, brotherly, flattering way I
could not thole with, and the tears came rapping into my eyes, faster
than it cared my manhood to let be seen; so I said till him, "Weel, weel,
Thomas, I ken I have done wrong; and I am sorry for't: they'll never find
me in siccan a scrape again."

Thomas Burlings then came forward in a friendly way, and shook hands with
me; telling that he would go back and plead before them in my behalf. He
said this over again, as we parted, at my shop-door; and, to do him
justice, surely he had not been worse than his word, for I have aye
attended the kirk as usual, standing, when it came to my rotation, at the
plate, and nobody, gentle or semple, ever spoke to me on the subject of
the playhouse, or minted the matter of the Rebuke from that day to this.

CHAPTER XIX.--THE AWFUL NIGHT.

Ha!--'twas but a dream;
But then so terrible, it shakes my soul!
Cold drops of sweat hang on my trembling flesh;
My blood grows chilly, and I freeze with horror.

_Richard the Third_.

The Fire-king one day rather amorous felt;
He mounted his hot copper filly;
His breeches and boots were of tin, and the belt
Was made of cast-iron, for fear it should melt
With the heat of the copper colt's belly.

Oh! then there was glitter and fire in each eye,
For two living coals were the symbols;
His teeth were calcined, and his tongue was so dry,
It rattled against them as though you should try
To play the piano on thimbles.

_Rejected Addresses_.

In the course of a fortnight from the time I parted with Maister Glen,
the Lauder carrier, limping Jamie, brought his callant to our shop-door
in his hand. He was a tall slender laddie, some fourteen years old, and
sore grown away from his clothes. There was something genty and delicate-
like about him, having a pale sharp face, blue eyes, a nose like a
hawk's, and long yellow hair hanging about his haffets, as if barbers
were unco scarce cattle among the howes of the Lammermoor hills. Having
a general experience of human nature, I saw that I would have something
to do towards bringing him into a state of rational civilization; but,
considering his opportunities, he had been well educated, and I liked his
appearance on the whole not that ill.

To divert him a while, as I did not intend yoking him to work the first
day, I sent out Benjie with him, after giving him some refreshment of
bread and milk, to let him see the town and all the uncos about it. I
told Benjie first to take him to the auld kirk, which is one wonderful
building, steeple and aisle; and as for mason-work, far before any thing
to be seen or heard tell of in our day; syne to Lugton brig, which is one
grand affair, hanging over the river Esk and the flour-mills like a
rainbow--syne to the Tolbooth, which is a terror to evil-doers, and from
which the Lord preserve us all!--syne to the Market, where ye'll see
lamb, beef, mutton, and veal, hanging up on cleeks, in roasting and
boiling pieces--spar-rib, jigget, shoulder, and heuk-bane, in the
greatest prodigality of abundance;--and syne down to the Duke's gate, by
looking through the bonny white-painted iron-stanchels of which, ye'll
see the deer running beneath the green trees; and the palace itself, in
the inside of which dwells one that needs not be proud to call the king
his cousin.

Brawly did I know, that it is a little after a laddie's being loosed from
his mother's apron-string, and hurried from home, till the mind can make
itself up to stay among fremit folk; or that the attention can be roused
to any thing said or done, however simple in the uptake. So, after
Benjie brought Mungo home again, gey forfaughten and wearied-out like, I
bade the wife gave him his four-hours, and told him he might go to his
bed as soon as he liked. Jealousing also, at the same time, that
creatures brought up in the country have strange notions about them with
respect to supernaturals--such as ghosts, brownies, fairies, and
bogles--to say nothing of witches, warlocks, and evil-spirits, I made
Benjie take off his clothes and lie down beside him, as I said, to keep
him warm; but, in plain matter of fact, (between friends,) that the
callant might sleep sounder, finding himself in a strange bed, and not
very sure as to how the house stood as to the matter of a good name.

Knowing by my own common sense, and from long experience of the ways of a
wicked world, that there is nothing like industry, I went to Mungo's
bedside in the morning, and wakened him betimes. Indeed, I'm leeing
there--I need not call it wakening him--for Benjie told me, when he was
supping his parritch out of his luggie at breakfast-time, that he never
winked an eye all night, and that sometimes he heard him greeting to
himself in the dark--such and so powerful is our love of home and the
force of natural affection. Howsoever, as I was saying, I took him ben
the house with me down to the workshop, where I had begun to cut out a
pair of nankeen trowsers for a young lad that was to be married the week
after to a servant-maid of Maister Wiggie's,--a trig quean, that
afterwards made him a good wife, and the father of a numerous small
family.

Speaking of nankeen, I would advise every one, as a friend, to buy the
Indian, and not the British kind--the expense of outlay being ill hained,
even at sixpence a-yard--the latter not standing the washing, but making
a man's legs, at a distance, look like a yellow yorline.

It behoved me now as a maister, bent on the improvement of his prentice,
to commence learning Mungo some few of the mysteries of our trade; so
having showed him the way to crock his hough, (example is better than
precept, as James Batter observes,) I taught him the plan of holding the
needle; and having fitted his middle-finger with a bottomless thimble of
our own sort, I set him to sewing the cotton-lining into one leg, knowing
that it was a part not very particular, and not very likely to be seen;
so that the matter was not great, whether the stitching was exactly
regular, or rather in the zigzag line. As is customary with all new
beginners, he made a desperate awkward hand at it, and of which I would
of course have said nothing, but that he chanced to brog his thumb, and
completely soiled the whole piece of work with the stains of blood;
which, for one thing, could not wash out without being seen; and, for
another, was an unlucky omen to happen to a marriage garment.

Every man should be on his guard: this was a lesson I learned when I was
in the volunteers, at the time Buonaparte was expected to land down at
Dunbar. Luckily for me in this case, I had, by some foolish mistake or
another, made an allowance of a half yard, over and above what I found I
could manage to shape on; so I boldly made up my mind to cut out the
piece altogether, it being in the back seam. In that business I trust I
showed the art of a good tradesman, having managed to do it so neatly
that it could not be noticed without the narrowest inspection; and having
the advantage of a covering by the coat-flaps, had indeed no chance of
being so, except on desperately windy days.

In the week succeeding that on which this unlucky mischance happened, an
accident almost as bad befell, though not to me, further than that every
one is bound by the Ten Commandments, to say nothing of his own
conscience, to take a part in the afflictions that befall their
door-neighbours.

When the voice of man was wheisht, and all was sunk in the sound sleep of
midnight, it chanced that I was busy dreaming that I was sitting one of
the spectators, looking at another play-acting piece of business. Before
coming this length, howsoever, I should by right have observed, that ere
going to bed I had eaten for my supper part of a black pudding, and two
sausages, that Widow Grassie had sent in a compliment to my wife, being a
genteel woman, and mindful of her friends--so that I must have had some
sort of nightmare, and not been exactly in my seven senses--else I could
not have been even dreaming of siccan a place. Well, as I was saying, in
the playhouse I thought I was; and all at once I heard Maister Wiggie,
like one crying in the wilderness, hallooing with a loud voice through
the window, bidding me flee from the snares, traps, and gin-nets of the
Evil One; and from the terrors of the wrath to come. I was in a terrible
funk; and just as I was trying to rise from the seat, that seemed somehow
glued to my body, and would not let me, to reach down my hat, which, with
its glazed cover, was hanging on a pin to one side, my face all red, and
glowing like a fiery furnace, for shame of being a second time caught in
deadly sin, I heard the kirk bell jow-jowing, as if it was the last trump
summoning sinners to their long and black account; and Maister Wiggie
thrust in his arm in his desperation, in a whirlwind of passion,
claughting hold of my hand like a vice, to drag me out head-foremost.
Even in my sleep, howsoever, it appears that I like free-will, and ken
that there are no slaves in our blessed country; so I tried with all my
might to pull against him, and gave his arm such a drive back, that he
seemed to bleach over on his side, and raised a hullaballoo of a yell,
that not only wakened me, but made me start upright in my bed.

For all the world such a scene! My wife was roaring "Murder,
murder!--Mansie Wauch, will ye no wauken?--Murder, murder! ye've felled
me wi' your nieve,--ye've felled me outright,--I'm gone for evermair,--my
haill teeth are doun my throat. Will ye no wauken, Mansie Wauch?--will
ye no wauken?--Murder, murder!--I say murder, murder, murder, murder!!!"

"Who's murdering us?" cried I, throwing my cowl back on the pillow, and
rubbing my eyes in the hurry of a tremendous fright.--"Who's murdering
us?--where's the robbers?--send for the town-officer!!"

"O Mansie!--O Mansie!" said Nanse, in a kind of greeting tone, "I daursay
ye've felled me--but no matter, now I've gotten ye roused. Do ye no see
the haill street in a bleeze of flames? Bad is the best; we maun either
be burned to death, or out of house and hall, without a rag to cover our
nakedness. Where's my son?--where's my dear bairn Benjie?"

In a most awful consternation, I jumped at this out to the middle of the
floor, hearing the causeway all in an uproar of voices; and seeing the
flichtering of the flames glancing on the houses in the opposite side of
the street, all the windows of which were filled with the heads of half-
naked folks, in round-eared mutches or Kilmarnocks; their mouths open,
and their eyes staring with fright; while the sound of the fire-engine,
rattling through the streets like thunder, seemed like the dead-cart of
the plague, come to hurry away the corpses of the deceased for interment
in the kirk-yard.

Never such a spectacle was witnessed in this world of sin and sorrow
since the creation of Adam. I pulled up the window and looked out--and,
lo and behold! the very next house to our own was all in a low from
cellar to garret; the burning joists hissing and cracking like mad; and
the very wind that blew along, as warm as if it had been out of the mouth
of a baker's oven!!

It was a most awful spectacle! more by token to me, who was likely to be
intimately concerned with it; and beating my brow with my clenched nieve,
like a distracted creature, I saw that the labour of my whole life was
likely to go for nought, and me to be a ruined man; all the earnings of
my industry being laid out on my stock in trade, and on the plenishing of
our bit house. The darkness of the latter days came over my spirit like
a vision before the prophet Isaiah; and I could see nothing in the years
to come but beggary and starvation; myself a fallen-back old man, with an
out-at-the-elbows coat, a greasy hat, and a bald pow, hirpling over a
staff, requeeshting an awmous--Nanse a broken-hearted beggar wife, torn
down to tatters, and weeping like Rachel when she thought on better
days--and poor wee Benjie going from door to door with a meal-pock on his
back.

The thought first dung me stupid, and then drove me to desperation; and
not even minding the dear wife of my bosom, that had fainted away as dead
as a herring, I pulled on my trowsers like mad, and rushed out into the
street, bareheaded and barefoot as the day that Lucky Bringthereout
dragged me into the world.

The crowd saw in the twinkling of an eyeball that I was a desperate man,
fierce as Sir William Wallace, and not to be withstood by gentle or
semple. So most of them made way for me; they that tried to stop me
finding it a bad job, being heeled over from right to left, on the broad
of their backs, like flounders, without respect of age or person; some
old women that were obstrapulous being gey sore hurt, and one of them
with a pain in her hainch even to this day. When I had got almost to the
door-cheek of the burning house, I found one grupping me by the back like
grim death; and, in looking over my shoulder, who was it but Nanse
herself, that, rising up from her faint, had pursued me like a whirlwind.
It was a heavy trial, but my duty to myself in the first place, and to my
neighbours in the second, roused me up to withstand it; so, making a
spend like a greyhound, I left the hindside of my shirt in her grasp,
like Joseph's garment in the nieve of Potiphar's wife, and up the stairs
headforemost among the flames.

Mercy keep us all! what a sight for mortal man to glowr at with his
living eyes! The bells were tolling amid the dark, like a summons from
above for the parish of Dalkeith to pack off to another world; the drums
were beat-beating as if the French were coming, thousand on thousand, to
kill, slay, and devour every maid and mother's son of us; the fire-engine
pump-pump-pumping like daft, showering the water like rainbows, as if the
windows of heaven were opened, and the days of old Noah come back again;
and the rabble throwing the good furniture over the windows like onion
peelings, where it either felled the folk below, or was dung to a
thousand shivers on the causey. I cried to them, for the love of
goodness, to make search in the beds, in case there might be any weans
there, human life being still more precious than human means; but not a
living soul was seen but a cat, which, being raised and wild with the
din, would on no consideration allow itself to be catched. Jacob Dribble
found that to his cost; for, right or wrong, having a drappie in his
head, he swore like a trooper that he would catch her, and carry her down
beneath his oxter; so forward he weired her into a corner, crouching on
his hunkers. He had much better have let it alone; for it fuffed over
his shoulder like wildfire, and scarting his back all the way down,
jumped like a lamplighter head-foremost through the flames, where, in the
raging and roaring of the devouring element, its pitiful cries were soon
hushed to silence for ever and ever, Amen!

At long and last, a woman's howl was heard on the street, lamenting, like
Hagar over young Ishmael in the wilderness of Beersheba, and crying that
her old grannie, that was a lameter, and had been bedridden for four
years come the Martinmas following, was burning to a cinder in the fore-
garret. My heart was like to burst within me when I heard this dismal
news, remembering that I myself had once an old mother, that was now in
the mools; so I brushed up the stair like a hatter, and burst open the
door of the fore-garret--for in the hurry I could not find the sneck, and
did not like to stand on ceremony. I could not see my finger before me,
and did not know my right hand from the left, for the smoke; but I groped
round and round, though the reek mostly cut my breath, and made me cough
at no allowance, till at last I catched hold of something cold and
clammy, which I gave a pull, not knowing what it was, but found out to be
the old wife's nose. I cried out as loud as I was able for the poor
creature to hoise herself up into my arms; but, receiving no answer, I
discovered in a moment that she was suffocated, the foul air having gone
down her wrong hause; and, though I had aye a terror at looking at, far
less handling a dead corpse, there was something brave within me at the
moment, my blood being up; so I caught hold of her by the shoulders, and
harling her with all my might out of her bed, got her lifted on my back
heads and thraws, in the manner of a boll of meal, and away as fast as my
legs could carry me.

There was a providence in this haste; for, ere I was half-way down the
stair, the floor fell with a thud like thunder; and such a combustion of
soot, stour, and sparks arose, as was never seen or heard tell of in the
memory of man since the day that Samson pulled over the pillars in the
house of Dagon, and smoored all the mocking Philistines as flat as
flounders. For the space of a minute I was as blind as a beetle, and was
like to be choked for want of breath; however, as the dust began to clear
up, I saw an open window, and hallooed down to the crowd for the sake of
mercy to bring a ladder, to save the lives of two perishing
fellow-creatures, for now my own was also in imminent jeopardy. They
were long of coming, and I did not know what to do; so thinking that the
old wife, as she had not spoken, was maybe dead already, I was once
determined just to let her drop down upon the street; but I knew that the
so doing would have cracked every bone in her body, and the glory of my
bravery would thus have been worse than lost. I persevered, therefore,
though I was fit to fall down under the dead weight, she not being able
to help herself, and having a deal of beef in her skin for an old woman
of eighty; but I got a lean, by squeezing her a wee between me and the
wall.

I thought they would never have come, for my shoeless feet were all
bruised, and bleeding from the crunched lime and the splinters of broken
stones; but, at long and last, a ladder was hoisted up, and having
fastened a kinch of ropes beneath her oxters, I let her slide down over
the upper step, by way of a pillyshee, having the satisfaction of seeing
her safely landed in the arms of seven old wives, that were waiting with
a cosey warm blanket below. Having accomplished this grand manoeuvre,
wherein I succeeded in saving the precious life of a woman of eighty,
that had been four long years bedridden, I tripped down the steps myself
like a nine-year-old, and had the pleasure, when the roof fell in, to
know that I for one had done my duty; and that, to the best of my
knowledge, no living creature except the poor cat had perished within the
jaws of the devouring element.

But, bide a wee; the work was, as yet, only half done. The fire was
still roaring and raging, every puff of wind that blew through the black
firmament, driving the red sparks high into the air, where they died away
like the tail of a comet, or the train of a skyrocket; the joisting
crazing, cracking, and tumbling down; and now and then the bursting cans
playing flee in a hundred flinders from the chimney-heads. One would
have naturally enough thought that our engine could have drowned out a
fire of any kind whatsoever in half a second, scores of folks driving
about with pitcherfuls of water, and scaling half of it on one another
and the causey in their hurry; but, woe's me! it did not play puh on the
red-het stones, that whizzed like iron in a smiddy trough; so, as soon as
it was darkness and smoke in one place, it was fire and fury in another.

My anxiety was great; seeing that I had done my best for my neighbours,
it behoved me now, in my turn, to try and see what I could do for myself;
so, notwithstanding the remonstrances of my friend James Batter--whom
Nanse, knowing I had bare feet, had sent out to seek me, with a pair of
shoon in his hand; and who, in scratching his head, mostly rugged out
every hair of his wig with sheer vexation--I ran off, and mounted the
ladder a second time, and succeeded, after muckle speeling, in getting
upon the top of the wall; where, having a bucket slung up to me by means
of a rope, I swashed down such showers on the top of the flames, that I
soon did more good, in the space of five minutes, than the engine and the
ten men, that were all in a broth of perspiration with pumping it, did
the whole night over; to say nothing of the multitude of drawers of
water, men, wives, and weans, with their cuddies, leglins, pitchers,
pails, and water-stoups; having the satisfaction, in a short time, to
observe every thing getting as black as the crown of my hat, and the
gable of my own house becoming as cool as a cucumber.

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