The Life of Mansie Wauch

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I jealoused at once that this was nonsense; judging that, by all means of
rationality, the creature would be off and away like lightning to the sea-
shore, and over to France in some honest man's fishing-boat, down by at
Fisherrow; but, to throw stoure in the een of the two callants, I loaded
with a wheen draps in their presence; and, warily priming the pan, went
forward with the piece at full-cock.

Tommy and Benjie came behind me, while, pushing the door wide open with
the muzzle, as I held my finger at the tricker, I cried, "Stand or be
shot;" when young Cursecowl's big ugly mastiff-dog, with the bare mutton
bone in its teeth, bolted through between my legs like a fury, and with
such a force as to heel me over on the braid of my back, while I went a
dunt on the causey that made the gun go off, and riddled Nanse's best
washing-tub in a manner that laid it on the superannuated list as to the
matter of holding in water. The goose that was sitting on her eggs,
among clean straw, in the inside of it, was also rendered a lameter for
life.

What became of the French vagrant was never seen or heard tell of from
that day to this. Maybe he was catched, and, tied neck and heels,
hurried back to Penicuik as fast as he left it; or maybe--as one of the
Fisherrow oyster-boats was amissing next morning--he succeeded in giving
our brave fleets the slip, and rowing night and day against wind and
tide, got home in a safe skin: but this is all matter of surmise--nobody
kens.

On making search in the coal-house at our leisure afterwards, we found a
boxful of things with black dots on them, some with one, some with two,
and four, and six, and so on, for playing at an outlandish game they call
the dominoes. It was the handiwork of the poor French creature, that had
no other Christian employment but making these and suchlike, out of sheep-
shanks and marrow-bones. I never liked gambling all my life, it being
contrary to the Ten Commandments; and mind of putting on the back of the
fire the old pack of cards, with the Jack of Trumps among them, that the
deboshed journeymen tailors, in the shop with me in the Grassmarket, used
to play birkie with when the maister's back was turned. This is the
first time I have acknowledged the transaction to a living soul; had they
found me out at the time, my life would not have been worth a pinch of
snuff. But as to the dominoes, considering that the Frenchy must have
left them as a token of gratitude, and as the only payment in his power
for a bit comfortable supper, it behoved me--for so I thought--not to
turn the wrong side of my face altogether on his present, as that would
be unmannerly towards a poor stranger.

Nevertheless, and notwithstanding all these reasons, the dominoes, after
every thing that can be said of good anent them, were a black sight, and
for months and months produced a scene of riot and idleness after working
hours, that went far to render our housie, that was before a picture of
decorum and decency, a tabernacle of confusion, and a hell upon earth.
Whenever time for stopping work came about, down we regularly all sat,
night after night, the wife, Benjie, Tommy Staytape, and myself, playing
for a ha'penny the game, and growing as anxious, fierce, and keen about
it, as if we had been earning the bread of life. After two or three
months' trial, I saw that it would never do, for all subordination was
fast coming to an end in our bit house, and, for lack of looking after, a
great number of small accounts for clouting elbows, piecing waistcoats,
and mending leggins, remained unpaid; a great number of wauf customers
crowding about us, by way of giving us their change, but with no
intention of ever paying a single fraction. The wife, that used to keep
every thing bein and snug, behaving herself like the sober mother of a
family, began to funk on being taken through hands, and grew obstrapulous
with her tongue. Instead of following my directions--who was his born
maister in the cutting and shaping line--Tommy Staytape pretended to set
up a judgment of his own, and disfigured some ploughmen's jackets in a
manner most hideous to behold; while, to crown all, even Absalom, the
very callant Benjie, my only bairn, had the impudence to contradict me
more than once, and began to think himself as clever as his father. Save
us all! it was a terrible business, but I determined, come what would, to
give it the finishing stitch.

Every night being worse than another, I did not wait long for an
opportunity of letting the whole of them ken my mind, and that, whenever
I chose, I could make them wheel to the right about. So it chanced, as
we were playing, that I was in prime luck, first rooking the one and syne
the other, and I saw them twisting and screwing their mouths about as if
they were chewing bitter aloes. Finding that they were on the point of
being beaten roop and stoop, they all three rose up from the chairs,
crying with one voice, that I was a cheat.--An elder of Maister Wiggie's
kirk to be called a cheat! Most awful!!! Flesh and blood could not
stand it, more especially when I thought on who had dared to presume to
call me such; so, in a whirlwind of fury, I swept up two nievefuls of
dominoes off the table, and made them flee into the bleezing fire; where,
after fizzing and cracking like a wheen squeebs, the whole tot, except
about half-a-dozen which fell into the porritch-pot, which was on boiling
at the time, were reduced to a heap of grey aizles. I soon showed them
who was the top of the tree, and what they were likely to make of
undutiful rebellion.

So much for a Mounseer's legacy; being in a kind of doubt whether,
according to the Riot Act and the Articles of War, I had a clear
conscience in letting him away, I could not expect that any favour
granted at his hands was likely to prosper. In fighting, it is well kent
to themselves and all the world, that they have no earthly chance with
us; so they are reduced to the necessity of doing what they can, by
coming to our firesides in sheep's clothing, and throwing ram-pushion
among the family broth. They had better take care that they do not get
their fingers scadded.

Having given the dominoes their due, and washed my hands free of gambling
I trust for evermore, I turned myself to a better business, which was the
going, leaf by leaf, back through our bit day-book, where I found a
tremendous sowd of wee outstanding debts. I daresay, not to tell a lee,
there were fifty of them, from a shilling to eighteenpence, and so on;
but small and small, reckoned up by simple addition, amount to a round
sum; while, to add to the misery of the matter, I found we were
entangling ourselves to work to a wheen ugly customers, skemps that had
not wherewithal to pay lawful debts, and downright rascals, raggamuffins,
and ne'er-do-weels. According to the articles of indenture drawn up
between me and Tommy Staytape, by Rory Sneckdrawer the penny-writer, when
he was bound a prentice to me for seven years, I had engaged myself to
bring him up to be a man of business. Though now a journeyman, I
reckoned the obligation still binding; so, tying up two dockets of
accounts with a piece of twine, I gave one parcel to Tommy, and the other
to Benjie, telling them, by way of encouragement, that I would give them
a penny the pound for what silver they could bring me in by hook or
crook.

After three days' toil and trouble, wherein they mostly wore their shoon
off their feet, going first up one close and syne down another, up trap-
stairs to garrets and ben long trances that led into dirty holes--what
think ye did they collect? Not one bodle--not one coin of copper! This
one was out of work;--and that one had his house-rent to pay;--and a
third one had an income in his nose;--and a fourth was bedridden with
rheumatics;--and a fifth one's mother's auntie's cousin was dead;--and a
sixth one's good-brother's nevoy was going to be married come
Martymas;--and a seventh one was away to the back of beyond to see his
granny in the Hielands;--and so on. It was a terrible business, but what
wool can ye get by clipping swine?

The only rational answers I got were two; one of them, Geggie Trotter, a
natural simpleton, told Tommy Staytape, "that, for part-payment, he would
give me a prime leg of mutton, as he had killed his sow last week."--And
what, said I to Benjie, did Jacob Truff the gravedigger tell ye by way of
news? "He just bad me tell ye, faither, that hoo could ye expect he
cou'd gie ye onything till the times grew better; as he hadna buried a
living soul in the kirkyard for mair nor a fortnight."

CHAPTER XXVI.--BENJIE ON THE CARPET.

It's no in titles, nor in rank--
It's no in wealth, like Lon'on bank,
To purchase peace and rest;
It's no in making muckle _mair_--
It's no in books--it's no in lear,
To make us truly blest.

BURNS.

It is a most wonderful thing to the eye of a philosopher, to make
observation how youth gets up, notwithstanding all the dunts and tumbles
of infancy--to say nothing of the spaining-brash and the teeth-cutting;
and to behold the visible changes that the course of a few years
produces. Keep us all! it seemed but yesterday to me, when Benjie, a wee
bit smout of a wean, with long linty locks and docked petticoats, toddled
but and ben, with a coral gumstick tied round his waist with a bit
knitten; and now, after he had been at Dominie Threshem's for four years,
he had learned to read Barrie's Collection almost as well as the master
could do for his lugs; and was up to all manner of accounts, from simple
addition and the multiplication-table, even to vulgar fractions, and all
the lave of them.

At the yearly examination of the school-room by the Presbytery and
Maister Wiggie, he aye sat at the head of the form, and never failed
getting a clap on the head and a wheen carvies. They that are fathers
will not wonder that this made me as proud as a peacock; but when they
asked his name, and found whose son he was, then the matter seemed to
cease being a business of wonder, as nobody could suppose that an only
bairn, born to me in lawful wedlock, could be a dult. Folk's
cleverness--at least I should think so--lies in their pows; and, that
allowed, Benjie's was a gey droll one, being of the most remarkable sort
of a shape ye ever saw; but, what is more to the purpose both here and
hereafter, he was a real good-hearted callant, though as gleg as a hawk
and as sharp as a needle. Everybody that had the smallest gumption
prophesied that he would be a real clever one; nor could we grudge that
we took pains in his rearing--he having been like a sucking-turkey, or a
hot-house plant from far away, delicate in the constitution--when we saw
that the debt was likely to be paid with bank-interest, and that, by his
uncommon cleverality, the callant was to be a credit to our family.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Stop, stop, gudeman," cried Nanse, half greeting, "that's an awfu'
business; but I daresay it's owre true. But mightna we breed him a
doctor? It seems they have unco profits; and, as he's sae clever, he
might come to be a graduit."

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

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

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

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

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

"Haivers, haivers," said Nanse, birsing up like a cat before a colley.
"Sweep, say ye? I would sooner send him up wi' Lunardi to the man of the
moon; or see him banished, shackled neck and heels, to Botany Bay."

"A weel, a weel," answered I, "what notion have ye of the packman line?
We could fill his box with needles, and prins, and tape, and hanks of
worsted, and penny thimbles, at a small expense; and, putting a stick in
his hand, send him abroad into the wide world to push his fortune."

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

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

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

"Are ye really in your seven natural senses--or can I believe my ain een?
I could almost believe some warlock had thrown glamour into them," said
Nanse staring me broad in the face.

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

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

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

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

"Ye've heard, gudewife, from Benjie's own mouth, that he has made up his
mind to follow out the trade of a gentleman;--who has put such outrageous
notions in his head I'm sure I'll not pretend to guess at. Having never
myself been above daily bread, and constant work--when I could get it--I
dare not presume to speak from experience; but this I can say, from
having some acquaintances in the line, that, of all easy lives, commend
me to that of a gentleman's gentleman. It's true he's caa'd a flunky,
which does not sound quite the thing; but what of that? what's in a name?
pugh! it does not signify a bawbee--no, nor that pinch of snuff: for, if
we descend to particulars, we're all flunkies together, except his
Majesty on the throne.--Then William Pitt is his flunky--and half the
house of Commons are his flunkies, doing what he bids them, right or
wrong, and no daring to disobey orders, not for the hair in their
heads--then the Earl waits on my Lord Duke--Sir Something waits on my
Lord Somebody--and his tenant, Mr So-and-so, waits on him--and Mr So-and-
so has his butler--and the butler has his flunky--and the shoeblack
brushes the flunky's jacket--and so on. We all hang at one another's
tails like a rope of ingans--so ye observe, that any such objection in
the sight of a philosopher like our Benjie, would not weigh a straw's
weight.

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