The Life of Mansie Wauch

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"Then consider, for a moment--just consider, gudewife--what company a
flunky is every day taken up with, standing behind the chairs, and
helping to clean plates and porter; and the manners he cannot help
learning, if he is in the smallest gleg in the uptake, so that, when out
of livery, it is the toss up of a halfpenny whether ye find out the
difference between the man and the master. He learns, in fact, every
thing. He learns French--he learns dancing in all its branches--he
learns how to give boots the finishing polish--he learns how to play at
cards, as if he had been born and bred an Earl--he learns, from pouring
the bottles, the names of every wine brewed abroad--he learns how to
brush a coat, so that, after six months' tear and wear, one without
spectacles would imagine it had only gotten the finishing stitch on the
Saturday night before; and he learns to play on the flute, and the
spinnet, and the piano, and the fiddle, and the bagpipes; and to sing all
manner of songs, and to skirl, full gallop, with such a pith and birr,
that though he was to lose his precious eyesight with the small-pox, or a
flash of forked lightning, or fall down a three-story stair dead drunk,
smash his legs to such a degree that both of them required to be cut off,
above the knees, half an hour after, so far all right and well--for he
could just tear off his shoulder-knot, and make a perfect fortune--in the
one case, in being led from door to door by a ragged laddie, with a
string at the button-hole, playing 'Ower the Border,' 'The Hen's March,'
'Donald M'Donald,' 'Jenny Nettles,' and such like grand tunes, on the
clarinet; or in the other case, being drawn from town to town, and from
door to door, on a hurdle, like a lord, harnessed to four dogs of all
colours, at the rate of two miles in the hour, exclusive of
stoppages--What say ye, gudewife?"

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

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

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

"Joking!" answered I, smoothing down my chin, which was gey an'
rough--"Joking here or joking there, I should not think the settling of
an only bairn in an honourable way of doing for all the days of his
natural life, is any joking business. Ye dinna ken what ye're saying,
woman. Barbers! i'fegs, to turn up your nose at barbers! did ever living
hear such nonsense! But to be sure, one can blame nobody if they speak
to the best of their experience. I've heard tell of barbers, woman,
about London, that rode up this street, and down that other street, in
coaches and four, jumping out to every one that hallooed to them,
sharping razors both on stone and strap, at the ransom of a penny the
pair; and shaving off men's beards, whiskers and all, stoop and roop, for
a three-ha'pence. Speak of barbers! it's all ye ken about it. Commend
me to a safe employment, and a profitable. They may give others a nick,
and draw blood, but catch them hurting themselves. They are not exposed
to colds and rheumatics, from east winds and rainy weather; for they sit,
in white aprons, plaiting hair into wigs for auld folks that have bell-
pows, or making false curls for ladies that would fain like to look smart
in the course of nature. And then they go from house to house, like
gentlemen in the morning; cracking with Maister this or Madam that, as
they soap their chins with scented-soap, or put their hair up in marching
order either for kirk or playhouse. Then at their leisure, when they're
not thraug at home, they can pare corns to the gentry, or give
ploughmen's heads the bicker-cut for a penny, and the hair into the
bargain for stuffing chairs with; and between us, who knows--many
rottener ship has come to land--but that some genty Miss, fond of plays,
poems, and novels, may fancy our Benjie when he is giving her red hair a
twist with the torturing irons, and run away with him, almost whether he
will or not, in a stound of unbearable love!"

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

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

CHAPTER XXVII.--"PUGGIE, PUGGIE,"--A STORY WITHOUT A TAIL.

Saw ye Johnie coming? quo' she,
Saw ye Johnie coming?
Wi' his blue bonnet on his head,
And his doggie running.

_Old Ballad_.

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

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

After bargaining about the serge--and taking two or three other things,
such as a leather-cap edged with rabbit-fur for her little nevoy--a dozen
of plated buttons for her goodman's new waistcoat, which was making up at
Bonnyrig by Nicky Sharpshears, my old apprentice--and a spotted silk
napkin for her own Sunday neck wear--I tied up the soft articles with
grey paper and skinie, and was handing over the odd bawbees of change,
when, just as she was lifting the leather-cap from the counter, she said
with a terrible face, looking down to the ground as if she was
short-sighted--"Pity me! what's that?"

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

The bit doggie was sitting cowering and shivering, and pressing its back
against the counter, giving every now and then a mournful whine, so we
plainly saw that every thing was not right. On the which, the wife,
slipping a little back, snapped her finger and thumb before its nose, and
cried out--"Hiskie, poor fellow!" but no--it would not do. She then
tried it by its own name, and bade it rise, saying, "Puggie, Puggie!"
when--would ever mortal man of woman born believe it?--its bit black,
bushy, curly tail, was off by the rump--docked and away, as if it had
been for a wager.

"Eh, megstie!" cried the woman, laying down the leather-cap and the tied-
up parcel, and holding out both her hands in astonishment. "Eh, my
goodness, what's come o' the brute's tail? Lovy ding! just see, it's
clean gane! Losh keep me! that's awfu'! Div ye keep rotten-fa's about
your premises, Maister Wauch? See, a bonny business as ever happened in
the days of ane's lifetime!"

As a furnishing tailor, as a Christian, and as an inhabitant of Dalkeith,
my corruption was raised--was up like a flash of lightning, or a cat's
back. Such doings in an enlightened age and a civilized country!--in a
town where we have three kirks, a grammar school, a subscription library,
a ladies' benevolent society, a mechanics' institution, and a debating
club! My heart burned within me like dry tow; and I could mostly have
jumped up to the ceiling with vexation and anger--seeing as plain as a
pikestaff, though the simple woman did not, that it was the handiwork of
none other than our neighbour Reuben Cursecowl, the butcher. Dog on it,
it was too bad--it was a rascally transaction; so, come of it what would,
I could not find it in my heart to screen him. "I'll wager, however,"
said I, in a kind of off-hand way, not wishing exactly, ye observe, to be
seen in the business, "that it will have been running away with
beef-steaks, mutton-chops, sheep feet, or something else out of the
booth; and some of his prentice laddies may have come across its hind-
quarters accidentally with the cleaver."

"Mistake here, or mistake there," said the woman, her face growing as red
as the sleeve of a soldier's jacket, and her two eyes burning like live
coals--"'Od the butcher, but I'll butcher him, the nasty, ugly,
ill-faured vagabond; the thief-like, cruel, malicious, ill-hearted, down-
looking blackguard! He would go for to offer for to presume for to dare
to lay hands on an honest man's son's doug! It sets him weel, the
bloodthirsty Gehazi, the halinshaker ne'er-do-weel! I'll gie him sic a
redding up as he never had since the day his mother boor him!" Then
looting down to the poor bit beast, that was bleeding like a sheep--"Ay,
Puggie, man," she said in a doleful voice, "they've made ye an unco
fright; but I'll gie them up their fit for't; I'll show them, in a couple
of hurries, that they have catched a Tartar!"--and with that out went the
woman, paper parcel, leather-cap and all, randying like a tinkler from
Yetholm; the wee wretchie cowering behind her, with the mouse-wabs
sticking on the place I had put them to stop the bleeding; and looking,
by all the world, like a sight I once saw, when I was a boy, on a visit
to my father's half-cousin, Aunt Heatherwig, on the Castle-hill of
Edinburgh--to wit, a thief going down Leith Walk, on his road to be
shipped for transportation to Botany Bay, after having been pelted for a
couple of hours with rotten eggs in the pillory.

Knowing the nature of the parties concerned, and that intimately on both
sides, I jealoused directly that there would be a stramash; so not
liking, for sundry reasons, to have my neb seen in the business, I shut
to the door, and drew the long bolt; while I hastened ben to the room,
and, softly pulling up a jink of the window, clapped the side of my head
to it; that, unobserved, I might have an opportunity of overhearing the
conversation between Reuben Cursecowl and the coallier wife; which, weel-
a-wat, was likely to become public property.

"Hollo! you man, do ye ken onything about that?" cried the randy
woman;--but wait a moment, till I give a skiff of description of our
neighbour Reuben.

By this time--it was ten years after James Batter's tragedy--Mr Cursecowl
was an oldish man--he is gathered to his fathers now--and was
considerably past his best, as his wife, douce, honest woman, used to
observe. His dress was a little in the Pagan style, and rendered him
kenspeckle to the eye of observation. Instead of a hat, he generally
wore a long red Kilmarnock nightcap, with a cherry on the top of it,
through foul weather and fair; and having a kind of trot in his walk,
from a bink forward in his knees, it dang-dangled behind him, like the
cap of Mr Merryman with the painted face, the show-folks' fool. On the
afternoon alluded to, he was in full killing-dress, having on an auld
blue short coatie, once long, but now docked in the tails, so that the
pocket-flaps and the hainch-buttons were not above three inches from the
place where his wife had snibbed it across by; and, from long use in his
bloodthirsty occupation, his sleeves flashed in the daylight as if they
had been double japanned. Tied round his beer-barrel-like waist was a
stripped apron, blue and white; and at his left side hung a bloody gaping
leather pouch, as if he had been an Israelite returned from the slaughter
of the Philistines, filled with steels and knives, straight and crooked,
that had done ample execution in their day, I'll warrant them. Up his
thighs were rolled his coarse rig-and-fur stockings, as if it were to
gird him for the battle, and his feet were slipped into a pair of
bauchles--that is, the under part of old boots cut from the legs. As to
his face, lo and behold! the moon shining in the Nor-west--yea, the sun
blazing in all his glory--had not a more crimson aspect than Reuben. Like
the pig-eyed Chinese folk on tea-cups, his peepers were diminutive and
twinkling; but his nose made up for them--and that it did--being portly
in all its dimensions broad and long, and as to colour, liker a radish
than any other production in nature. In short, he was as bonny a figure
as ever man of woman born clapped eye on; and was cleaving away, most
devoutly, at a side of black-faced mutton, when the woman, as I said
before, cried out, "Hollo! you man, do ye ken onything about that?"
pointing to the dumb animal that crawled and crouched behind her.

"Aweel, what o't?" cried Cursecowl, still hacking and cleaving away at
the meat.

"What o't? i' faith, billy, that's a gude ane," answered the wife. "But
ye'll no get aff that way; catch me, my man. My name's no Jenny
Mathieson an I haena ye afore your betters. I'll learn ye what
soommenses are."

Looking at her with a look of lightning for a couple of seconds--"Aff wi'
ye, gin you're wise," quo' Cursecowl, still cleaving away--"or I'll maybe
bring ye in for the sheep's-head it was trying to make off with in its
teeth. Do ye understand that?" And he gave a girn, that stretched his
mouth from ear to ear.

This was too much for the subterranean daughter of Eve; it was like
putting a red-hot poker among the coals of her own pit. "Oh, ye
incarnate cannibal!" she bawled out, doubling her nieve, and shaking it
in Reuben's face; "If ye have a conscience at a', think black-burning
shame o' yoursell! Just look, ye bluidy salvage; just take a look there,
my bonny man, o' your handiwark now. Isn't that very pretty?"--"Aff wi'
ye," continued Cursecowl, still cleaving away with the chopping-axe, and
muttering a volley of curses through the knife, which he held between his
teeth--"Aff wi' ye; and keep a calm sough."

"The dog's no mine, or I wadna have cared sae muckle. Siccan a like
beast! Siccan a fright to be seen!!! I'faith I think shame to tak' it
hame again!! Ay, man, ye're a pretty fellow! Ye've run fast when the
noses were dealing; ye're a bonny man to hack off a poor dumb animal's
tail. If it had been a Christian like yoursell, it wad have mattered
less--but a puir bit dumb, harmless animal!"

"Aff wi' ye there, and nane o' your chatter," thundered Reuben, stopping
in his cleaving, and turning the side of his red face round to the woman.
"Flee--vanish--and be cursed to ye--baith you and your doug thegither, ye
infernal limmer! It's weel for't, luckie, it was not its head instead of
its tail. Ye had better steik your gab--cut your stick--and pack off,
gin ye be wise."

"Think shame--think shame--think black-burning shame o' yoursell, ye born
and bred ruffian!" roared out the wife at the top story of her
voice--shaking her doubled nieve before him--stamping her heels on the
causey--then, drawing herself up, and holding her hands on her
hainches--"Just look, I tell ye, you unhanged blackguard, at your
precious handywark! Just look, what think ye of that, now? Tak' another
look now, ower that fief-like fiery nose o' yours, ye regardless Pagan!"

Flesh and blood could stand this no longer; and I saw Cursecowl's anger
boiling up within him, as in a red-hot fiery furnace.

"Wait a wee, my woman," muttered Cursecowl to himself, as, swearing
between his teeth, he hurried into the killing-booth.

Furious as the woman, however, was, she had yet enough of common sense
remaining within her to dread skaith; so, apprehending the bursting
storm, she had just taken to her heels, when out he came, rampauging
after her like a Greenland bear, with a large liver in each hand;--the
one of which, after describing a circle round his head, flashed after her
like lightning, and hearted her between the shoulders like a clap of
thunder; while the other, as he was repeating the volley, slipping
sideways from his fingers while he was driving it with all his force,
played drive directly through the window where I was standing, and gave
me such a yerk on the side of the head, that it could be compared to
nothing else but the lines written on the stucco image of Shakspeare, the
great playactor, on our parlour chimneypiece,

"The great globe itself,
Yea, all that it inherits, shall dissolve;"

and I lay speechless on the floor for goodness knows the length of time.
Even when I came to my recollection, it was partly to a sense of torment;
for Nanse, coming into the room, and not knowing the cause of my
disastrous overthrow, attributed it all to a fit of the apoplexy; and, in
her frenzy of affliction, had blistered all my nose with her Sunday scent-
bottle of aromatic vinegar.

For some weeks after there was a bumming in my ears, as if all the bee-
skeps on the banks of the Esk had been pent up within my head; and though
Reuben Cursecowl paid, like a gentleman, for the four panes he had
broken, he drove into me, I can assure him, in a most forcible and
striking manner, the truth of the old proverb--which is the moral of this
chapter--that "listeners seldom hear any thing to their own advantage."

CHAPTER XXVIII.--SERIOUS MUSINGS.

My eyes are dim with childish tears,
My heart is idly stirr'd,
For the same sound is in mine ears,
Which in those days I heard.
Thus fares it still in our decay;
And yet the wiser mind
Mourns less for what age takes away,
Than what it leaves behind.

WORDSWORTH.

After consultation with friends, and much serious consideration on such a
momentous subject, it having been finally settled on between the wife and
myself to educate Benjie to the barber and haircutting line, we looked
round about us in the world for a suitable master to whom we might
entrust our dear laddie, he having now finished his education, and
reached his fourteenth year.

It was visible in a twinkling to us both, that his apprenticeship could
not be gone through with at home in that first-rate style which would
enable him to reach the top of the tree in his profession; yet it gave us
a sore heart to think of sending away, at so tender an age, one who was
so dear to his mother and me, and whom we had, as it were, in a manner
made a pet of; so we reckoned it best to article him for a twelvemonth
with Ebenezer Packwood at the corner, before finally sending him off to
Edinburgh, to get his finishing in the wig, false-curl, and hair-baking
department, under Urquhart, Maclachlan, or Connal. Accordingly, I sent
for Eben to come and eat an egg with me--matters were entered upon and
arranged--Benjie was sent on trial; and though at first he funked and
fought refractory, he came, to the astonishment of his master and the old
apprentice, in less than no time to cut hair without many visible shear-
marks; and, within the first quarter, succeeded, without so much as
drawing blood, to unbristle, for a wager of his master's, the Saturday
night's countenance of Daniel Shoebrush himself, who was as rough as a
badger.

Having thus done for Benjie, it now behoved me to have an eye towards
myself; for, having turned the corner of manhood, I found that I was
beginning to be wearing away down the hillside of life. Customers, who
had as much faith in me as almost in their Bible with regard to every
thing connected with my own department, and who could depend on their
cloth being cut according to the newest and most approved fashions, began
now and then to return a coat upon my hand for alteration, as being quite
out of date; while my daily work, to which in the days of other years I
had got up blithe as the lark, instead of being a pleasure, came to be
looked forward to with trouble and anxiety, weighing on my heart as a
care, and on my shoulders as a burden.

Finding but too severely that such was the case, and that there is no
contending with the course of nature, I took sweet counsel together with
James Batter over a cup of tea and a cookie, concerning what it was best
for a man placed in my circumstances to betake myself to.

As industry ever has its own reward, let me without brag or boasting be
allowed to state, that, in my own case, it did not disappoint my
exertions. I had sat down a tenant, and I was now not only the landlord
of my own house and shop, but of all the back tenements to the head of
the garden, as also of the row of one-story houses behind, facing to the
loan, in the centre of which Lucky Thamson keeps up the sign of the
Tankard and Tappit Hen. It was also a relief to my mind, as the head of
my family, that we had cut Benjie loose from his mother's apron-string,
poor fellow, and set him adrift in an honest way of doing to buffet the
stormy ocean of life; so, every thing considered, it was found that
enough and to spare had been laid past by Nanse and me to spend the
evening of our days by the lound dykeside of domestic comfort.

In Tammie Bodkin, to whom I trust I had been a dutiful, as I know I was
an honoured master, I found a faithful journeyman, he having served me in
that capacity for nine years; so, it is not miraculous, being constantly,
during that period, under my attentive eye, that he was now quite a
deacon in all the departments of the business. As an eident scholar he
had his reward; for customers, especially during the latter years, when
my sight was scarcely so good, came at length to be not very scrupulous
as to whether their cloth was cut by the man or his master. Never let
filial piety be overlooked:--when I first patronized Tammie, and promoted
him to the dignity of sitting crosslegged along with me on the working-
board, he was a hatless and shoeless ragamuffin, the orphan lad of a
widowed mother, whose husband had been killed by a chain-shot, which
carried off his head, at the bloody battle of the Nile, under Lord
Nelson. Tammie was the oldest of four, and the other three were lasses,
that knew not in the morning where the day's providing was to come from,
except by trust in Him who sent the ravens to Elijah. By allowing Tammie
a trifle for board-wages, I was enabled to add my mite to the comforts of
the family; for he was kind, frugal, and dutiful, and would willingly
share with them to the last morsel. In the course of a few years he
became his mother's bread-winner, the lasses being sent to service--I
myself having recommended one of them to Deacon Burlings, and another to
Springheel the dancing-master; retaining Katie, the youngest, for
ourselves, to manage the kitchen, and go messages when required.

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