The Life of Mansie Wauch
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David Macbeth Moir >> The Life of Mansie Wauch
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SOUTHEY.
The morning being clear and fine, full of Milton's "vernal delight and
joy," I determined on a saunter; the inclemency of the weather having,
for more than a week, kept me a prisoner at home. Although now advanced
into the heart of February, a great fall of snow had taken place; the
roads were blocked up; the mails obstructed; and, while the merchant
grumbled audibly for his letters, the politician, no less chagrined,
conned over and over again his dingy rumpled old newspaper, compelled "to
eat the leek of his disappointment." The wind, which had blown
inveterately steady from the surly north-east, had veered, however,
during the preceding night, to the west; and, as it were by the spell of
an enchanter, an instant thaw commenced. In the low grounds the snow
gleamed forth in patches of a pearly whiteness; but, on the banks of
southern exposure, the green grass and the black trodden pathway again
showed themselves. The vicissitudes of twenty-four hours were indeed
wonderful. Instead of the sharp frost, the pattering hail, and the
congealed streams, we had the blue sky, the vernal zephyr, and the genial
sunshine; the stream murmuring with a broader wave, as if making up for
the season spent in the fetters of congelation; and that luxurious flow
of the spirits, which irresistibly comes over the heart, at the
re-assertion of Nature's suspended vigour.
As I passed on under the budding trees, how delightful it was to hear the
lark and the linnet again at their cheerful songs, to be aware that now
"the winter was over and gone;" and to feel that the prospect of summer,
with its lengthening days, and its rich variety of fruits and flowers,
lay fully before us. There is something within us that connects the
spring of the year with the childhood of our existence, and it is more
especially at that season, that the thrilling remembrances of long
departed pleasures are apt to steal into the thoughts; the re-awakening
of nature calling us, by a fearful contrast, to the contemplation of joys
that never can return, while all the time the heart is rendered more
susceptible by the beauteous renovation in the aspect of the external
world.
This sensation pressed strongly on my mind, as I chanced to be passing
the door of the village school, momentarily opened for the admission of
one, creeping along somewhat tardily with satchel on back, and "shining
morning face." What a sudden burst of sound was emitted--what harmonious
discord--what a commixture of all the tones in the vocal gamut, from the
shrill treble to the deep under-hum! A chord was touched which vibrated
in unison; boyish days and school recollections crowded upon me;
pleasures long vanished; feelings long stifled; and friendships--aye,
everlasting friendships--cut asunder by the sharp stroke of death!
A public school is a petty world within itself--a wheel within a wheel--in
so far as it is entirely occupied with its own concerns, affords its
peculiar catalogue of virtues and vices, its own cares, pleasures,
regrets, anticipations, and disappointments--in fact, a Lilliputian fac-
simile of the great one. By grown men, nothing is more common than the
assertion that childhood is a perfect Elysium; but it is a false
supposition that school-days are those of unalloyed carelessness and
enjoyment. It seems to be a great deal too much overlooked, that "little
things are great to little men;" and perhaps the mind of boyhood is more
active in its conceptions--more alive to the impulses of pleasure and
pain--in other words, has a more extended scope of sensations, than
during any other portion of our existence. Its days are not those of
lack-occupation; they are full of stir, animation, and activity, for it
is then we are in training for after life; and, when the hours of school
restraint glide slowly over, "like wounded snakes," the clock, that
chimes to liberty, sends forth the blood with a livelier flow; and
pleasure thus derives a double zest from the bridle that duty has
imposed, joy being generally measured according to the difficulty of its
attainment. What delight in life have we ever experienced more exquisite
than that, which flowed at once in upon us from the teacher's "_bene_,
_bene_," our own self-approbation, and release from the tasks of the
day?--the green fields around us wherein to ramble, the stream beside us
wherein to angle, the world of games and pastimes "before us where to
choose." Words are inadequate to express the thrill of transport, with
which, on the rush from the school-house door, the hat is waved in air,
and the shout sent forth!
Then what a variety of amusements succeed each other. Every mouth has
its favourite ones. The sportsman does not more keenly scrutinize his
kalendar for the commencement of the trouting, grouse-shooting, or hare-
hunting season, than the younker for the time of flying kites, bowling at
cricket, football, spinning peg-tops, and playing at marbles. Pleasure
is the focus, which it is the common aim to approximate; and the mass is
guided by a sort of unpremeditated social compact, which draws them out
of doors as soon as meals are discussed, with a sincere thirst of
amusement, as certainly as rooks congregate in spring to discuss the
propriety of building nests, or swallows in autumn to deliberate in
conclave on the expediency of emigration.
Then how perfectly glorious was the anticipation of a holiday--a long
summer day of liberty and ease! In anticipation it was a thing boundless
and endless, a foretaste of Elysium. It extended from the _prima luce_,
from the earliest dawn of radiance that streaked the "severing clouds in
yonder east," through the sun's matin, meridian, postmeridian, and vesper
circuit; from the disappearance of Lucifer in the re-illumined skies, to
his evening entree in the character of Hesperus. Complain not of the
brevity of life; 'tis _men_ that are idle; a thousand things could be
contrived and accomplished in that space, and a thousand schemes were
devised by us, when _boys_, to prevent any portion of it passing over
without improvement. We pursued the fleet angel of time through all his
movements till he blessed us.
With these and similar thoughts in my mind, I strayed down to the banks
of the river, and came upon the very spot, which, in those long-vanished
years, had been a favourite scene of our boyish sports. The impression
was overpowering; and as I gazed silently around me, my mind was subdued
to that tone of feeling which Ossian so finely designates "the joy of
grief." The trees were the same, but older, like myself; seemingly
unscathed by the strife of years--and herein was a difference. Some of
the very bushes I recognised as our old lurking-places at "hunt the
hare;" and, on the old fantastic beech-tree, I discovered the very bough
from which we were accustomed to suspend our swings. What
alterations--what sad havoc had time, circumstances, the hand of fortune,
and the stroke of death, made among us since then! How were the thoughts
of the heart, the hopes, the pursuits, the feelings changed; and, in
almost every instance, it is to be feared, for the worse! As I gazed
around me, and paused, I could not help reciting aloud to myself the
lines of Charles Lamb, so touching in their simple beauty.
"I have had playmates, I have had companions,
In my days of childhood, in my joyful school-days;
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.
Some they have died, and some they have left me,
And some are taken from me, all are departed;
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces."
The fresh green plat, by the brink of the stream, lay before me. It was
there that we played at leap-frog, or gathered dandelions for our tame
rabbits; and, at its western extremity, were still extant the reliques of
the deal-seat, at which we used to assemble on autumn evenings to have
our round of stories. Many a witching tale and wondrous tradition hath
there been told; many a marvel of "figures that visited the glimpses of
the moon;" many a recital of heroic and chivalrous enterprise,
accomplished ere warriors dwindled away to the mere puny-strength of
mortals. Sapped by the wind and rain, the planks lay in a sorely decayed
and rotten state, looking in their mossiness like a sign-post of
desolation, a memento of terrestrial instability. Traces of the knife
were still here and there visible upon the trunks of the supporting
trees; and with little difficulty I could decipher some well-remembered
initials.
"Cold were the hands that carved them there."
It is, no doubt, wonderful that the human mind can retain such a mass of
recollections; yet we seem to be, in general, little aware that for one
solitary incident in our lives, preserved by memory, hundreds have been
buried in the silent charnel-house of oblivion. We peruse the past, like
a map of pleasing or melancholy recollections, and observe lines crossing
and re-crossing each other in a thousand directions; some spots are
almost blank; others faintly traced; and the rest a confused and
perplexed labyrinth. A thousand feelings that, in their day and hour,
agitated our bosoms, are now forgotten; a thousand hopes, and joys, and
apprehensions, and fears, are vanished without a trace. Schemes, which
cost us much care in their formation, and much anxiety in their
fulfilment, have glided, like the clouds of yesterday, from our
remembrance. Many a sharer of our early friendships, and of our boyish
sports, we think of no more; they are as if they had never been, till
perhaps some accidental occurrence, some words in conversation, some
object by the wayside, or some passenger in the street, attract our
notice--and then, as if awaking from a perplexing trance, a light darts
in upon our darkness; and we discover that thus some one long ago spoke;
that there something long ago happened; or that the person, who just
passed us like a vision, shared smiles with us long, long years ago, and
added a double zest to the enjoyments of our childhood.
Of our old class-fellows, of those whose days were of "a mingled yarn"
with ours, whose hearts blended in the warmest reciprocities of
friendship, whose joys, whose cares, almost whose wishes were in common,
how little do we know? how little will even the severest scrutiny enable
us to discover? Yet, at one time, we were inseparable "like Juno's
swans;" we were as brothers, nor dreamt we of ought else, in the
susceptibility of our youthful imagination, than that we were to pass
through all the future scenes of life, side by side; and, mutually
supporting and supported, lengthen out the endearments, the ties, and the
feelings of boyhood unto the extremities of existence. What a fine but a
fond dream--alas, how wide of the cruel reality! The casual relation of
a traveller may discover to us where one of them resided or resides. The
page of an obituary may accidentally inform us how long one of them
lingered on the bed of sickness, and by what death he died. Some we may
perhaps discover in elevated situations, from which worldly pride might
probably prevent their stooping down to recognise us. Others, immersed
in the labyrinths of business, have forgot all, in the selfish pursuits
of earthly accumulation. While the rest, the children of misfortune and
disappointment, we may occasionally find out amid the great multitude of
the streets, to whom life is but a desert of sorrow, and against whom
prosperity seems to have shut for ever her golden gates.
Such are the diversities of condition, the varieties of fortune to which
man is exposed, while climbing the hill of probationary difficulty. And
how sublimely applicable are the words of Job, expatiating on the
uncertainty of human existence: "Man dieth and wasteth away; yea, man
giveth up the ghost, and where is he? As the waters fail from the sea,
and the flood decayeth and drieth up; so man lieth down and riseth not
till the heavens be no more."
While standing on the same spot, where of yore the boyish multitude
congregated in pursuit of their eager sports, a silent awe steals over
the bosom, and the heart desponds at the thought, that all these once
smiling faces are scattered now! Some, mayhap, tossing on the waste and
perilous seas; some the merchants of distant lands; some fighting the
battles of their country; others dead--inhabitants of the dark and narrow
house, and hearing no more the billows of life, that thunder and break
above their low and lonely dwelling-place!
* * * * *
Nanse, who was sitting by the table, knitting a pair of light-blue
worsted stockings for Benjie, and myself, who was sewing on the buttons
of a velveteen jacket for a country lad, were, I must say, not a little
delighted, not only with the way in which the Welshman's late master had
spoken of his school-fellows, but with the manner in which James Batter,
with his specs on, had read it over to us. Upon my word--and that of an
elder--I do not believe that even Mr Wiggie himself could have done the
thing greater justice. It was just as if he had been a play-actor man,
spouting Douglas's tragedy.
Having folded up that paper, and turned over not a few others, the
docketings of which he read out to us, James at last says, "Ou ay, here
it is. I think I can now prove to ye, that the gentleman's sweetheart
died abroad; and that, likely from her name--for it is here mentioned--she
must have been a Portugee or Spaniard."
"Ay, let us hear it," cried Nanse. "Do, like a man, let us hear it,
James; for I delight above a' things to hear about love-stories. Do ye
mind, Maister," she said, "when ye was so deep in love aince yoursell?"
"Foolish woman," I said, giving her a kind of severe look; "is that all
your manners to interrupt Mr Batter? If ye'll just keep a calm sough,
ye'll hear the long and the short o't, in good time."
By this, James, who did not relish interruption, and was a thought
fidgety in his natural temper, had laid down the paper on the table,
snuffed the candle, and raised his spectacles on his brow. But I said to
him, "Excuse freedoms, James, and be so good as resume your discourse."
Then wishing to smooth him down, I added, by way of compliment--"Do go
on; for you really are a prime reader. Nature surely intended ye for a
minister."
"Dinna flatter me," said James; looking, however, rather proudishly at
what I had said, and replacing his glasses on the brig of his nose, he
then read us a screed of metre to the following effect; part of which, I
am free to confess, is rather above my comprehension. But, never mind.
ELEGIAC STANZAS.
I.
'Tis midnight deep; the full round moon,
As 'twere a spectre, walks the sky;
The balmy breath of gentlest June
Just stirs the stream that murmurs by;
Above me frowns the solemn wood;
Nature, methinks, seems Solitude
Embodied to the eye.
II.
Yes, 'tis a season and a scene,
Inez, to think on thee; the day,
With stir and strife, may come between
Affection and thy beauty's ray,
But feeling here assumes control,
And mourns my desolated soul
That thou are rapt away!
III.
Thou wert a rainbow to my sight,
The storms of life before thee fled;
The glory and the guiding light,
That onward cheer'd and upward led;
From boyhood to this very hour,
For me, and only me, thy flower
Its fragrance seem'd to shed.
IV.
Dark though the world for me might show
Its sordid faith and selfish gloom,
Yet 'mid life's wilderness to know
For me that sweet flower shed its bloom,
Was joy, was solace:--thou art gone--
And hope forsook me, when the stone
Sank darkly o'er thy tomb.
V.
And art thou dead? I dare not think
That thus the solemn truth can be;
And broken is the only link
That chain'd youth's pleasant thoughts to me!
Alas! that thou couldst know decay,
That, sighing, I should live to say
'The cold grave holdeth thee!'
VI.
For me thou shon'st, as shines a star,
Lonely, in clouds when Heaven is lost;
Thou wert my guiding light afar,
When on misfortune's billows tost:
Now darkness hath obscured that light,
And I am left in rayless night,
On Sorrow's lowering coast.
VII.
And art thou gone? I deem'd thee some
Immortal essence--art thou gone?--
I saw thee laid within the tomb,
And turn'd away to mourn alone:
Once to have loved, is to have loved
Enough; and, what with thee I proved,
Again I'll seek in none.
VIII.
Earth in thy sight grew faery land;--
Life was Elysium--thought was love,--
When, long ago, hand clasp'd in hand,
We roam'd through Autumn's twilight grove;
Or watch'd the broad uprising moon
Shed, as it were, a wizard noon,
The blasted heath above.
IX.
Farewell!--and must I say farewell?--
No--thou wilt ever be to me
A present thought; thy form shall dwell
In love's most holy sanctuary;
Thy voice shall mingle with my dreams,
And haunt me, when the shot-star gleams
Above the rippling sea.
X.
Never revives the past again;
But still thou art, in lonely hours,
To me earth's heaven,--the azure main,--
Soft music,--and the breath of flowers;
My heart shall gain from thee its hues:
And Memory give, though Truth refuse,
The bliss that once was ours!
After this, Mr Batter read over to us a great many other curiosities,
about foreign things wonderful to hear, and foreign places wonderful to
behold. Moreover, also, of divers adventures by sea and land. But the
time wearing late, and Tammie Bodkin having brought ben the shop-key,
after putting on the window-shutters, Nanse and I, out of
good-fellowship, thought we could not do less than ask the honest man,
whose cleverality had diverted us so much, to sit still and take a chack
of supper;--James being up in the air, from having been allowed to ride
on his hobby so briskly, made only a show of objection; so, after a
rizzard haddo, we had a jug of toddy, and sat round the fire with our
feet on the fender--Benjie having fallen asleep with his clothes on, and
been carried away to his bed. Poor bit mannikin!
I never remember to have heard James so prime either on Boston or
Josephus; but as his heart warmed with the liquor and the good fire, for
it was a cold rawish night,--he returned to Taffy with the pigtail's
master; and insisted, that as we had heard about his foreign sweetheart's
death, which he appeared to have taken so much to heart, we should just
bear with him once more, as he read over what he called her dirgie, which
was written on a half-sheet of grey mouldy paper--as if handed down from
the days of the Covenanters. It jingles well; and both Nanse and me
thought it gey and pretty; but eh! if ye only had heard how James Batter
read it. It beat cock-fighting.
DIRGE.
I.
Weep not for her!--Oh she was far too fair,
Too pure to dwell on this guilt-tainted earth!
The sinless glory, and the golden air
Of Zion, seem'd to claim her from her birth;
A Spirit wander'd from its native Zone,
Which, soon discovering, took her for its own:
Weep not for Her!
II.
Weep not for her!--Her span was like the sky,
Whose thousand stars shine beautiful and bright;
Like flowers that know not what it is to die;
Like long-linked, shadeless months of Polar light;
Like music floating o'er a waveless lake,
While Echo answers from the flowery brake:
Weep not for Her!
III.
Weep not for her!--She died in early youth,
Ere hope had lost its rich romantic hues;
When human bosoms seem'd the homes of truth,
And earth still gleam'd with beauty's radiant dews.
Her summer prime waned not to days that freeze;
Her wine of life was run not to the lees:
Weep not for Her!
IV.
Weep not for her--By fleet or slow decay,
It never grieved her bosom's core to mark
The playmates of her childhood wane away,
Her prospects wither, or her hopes grow dark;
Translated by her God with spirit shriven,
She pass'd as 'twere in smiles from earth to heaven:
Weep not for Her!
V.
Weep not for her!--It was not hers to feel
The miseries that corrode amassing years,
'Gainst dreams of baffled bliss the heart to steel,
To wander sad down age's vale of tears,
As whirl the wither'd leaves from friendship's tree,
And on earth's wintry wold alone to be:
Weep not for Her!
VI.
Weep not for her!--She is an angel now,
And treads the sapphire floors of paradise:
All darkness wiped from her refulgent brow,
Sin, sorrow, suffering, banish'd from her eyes;
Victorious over death, to her appear
The vista'd joys of heaven's eternal year;
Weep not for Her!
VII.
Weep not for her!--Her memory is the shrine
Of pleasant thoughts, soft as the scent of flowers.
Calm as on windless eve the sun's decline,
Sweet as the song of birds among the bowers,
Rich as a rainbow with its hues of light,
Pure as the moonshine of an autumn night:
Weep not for Her.
VIII.
Weep not for her!--There is no cause for woe;
But rather nerve the spirit that it walk
Unshrinking o'er the thorny paths below,
And from earth's low defilements keep thee back:
So, when a few, fleet, severing years have flown,
She'll meet thee at heaven's gate--and lead thee on!
Weep not for Her.
Having right and law on my side, as any man of judgment may perceive with
half an eye, nothing could hinder me, if I so liked, to print the whole
bundle; but, in the meantime, we must just be satisfied with the
foregoing curiosities, which we have picked out. All that I have set
down concerning myself, the reader may take on credit as open and even-
down truth; but as to whether Taffy's master's nick-nackets be true or
false, every one is at liberty, in this free country, to think for
himself. Old sparrows are not easily caught with chaff; and unless I saw
a proper affidavit, I would not, for my own part, pin my faith to a
single word of them. But every man his own opinion,--that's my motto.
In the Yankee Almanack of Poor Richard, which, besides the Pilgrim's
Progress and the Book of Martyrs, I whiles read on the week-days for a
little diversion, I see it is set down with great rationality, that "we
should never buy for the bargain sake." Experience teaches all men, and
I found that to my cost in this matter; for, cheap as the coat and
waistcoat seemed which I had bought from the auld-farrant Welsh flunkie
with the peaked hat and the pigtail, I made no great shakes of them after
all. Neither the Lord Provost of Edinburgh, nor any other of the grand
public characters, ever made me an offer for them, as some had led me to
expect; and the playhouse people lay all as quiet as ducks in a storm.
After hanging at my window for two or three months, collecting all the
idle wives and weans of the parish to glour and gaze at them from morn
till night, during which time I got half of my lozens broken, by their
knocking one another's heads through, I was obliged to get quit of them
at last, by selling them to a man and his son, that kept dancing dogs,
Pan's pipes, and a tambourine; and that made a livelihood by tumbling on
a carpet in the middle of the street, the one playing "Carle now the
King's come," as the other whummled head over heels, and then jumped up
into the air, cutting capers, to show that not a bone of his body had
been broken.
Knowing that the raiment was not for every body's wear, and that the like
of it was not to be found in a country side, I put a decent price on it,
"foreign birds with fair feathers" aye taking the top place of the
market. When I mentioned forty shillings to the dancing-dog man and his
son, they said nothing, but, putting their tongues in their cheeks, took
up their hats, wishing me a good day. Next forenoon, however, a slight-
of-hand character having arrived, together with a bass drum and a bugle
horn, that was likely to take the shine out of them, and maybe also
purchase my article--which was capital for his purpose, having famous
wide sleeves--they came back in less than no time, asking the liberty,
before finally concluding with me, of carrying them home to their
lodgings for ten minutes to see how they would fit; and, in that case,
offering me thirty-five shillings and an old flute. The old flute was
for next to no use at all, except for wee Benjie, poor thing, too-tooing
on, to keep him good, and I told them so, myself being no musicianer; but
would take their offer not to quarrel. It would not do unless some of us
were timber-tuned; men not being meant for blackbirds.
Home went the man, and home went the son, and home went my grand coat and
waistcoat over his arm; and putting my hands into my breeches pockets, as
if I had satisfactorily concluded a great transaction, I marched ben to
the back shop, and took my needle into play, as if nothing in the world
had happened; but where their home lay, or whether the raiment fitted or
not, goodness knows, having never to this blessed hour heard word or
wittens of either of them. Such a pair of blacks! It just shows us how
simple we Scotch folk are. The London man swindled me out of my lawful
room-rent and my Sunday velveteens; the Eirishers, as will be but too
soon seen, made free with my hen-house, committing felonious robbery at
the dead hour of night; and here a decent-looking old Welshman, with a
pigtail tied with black tape, palmed a grand coat and waistcoat upon me,
that were made away with by a man and his son, a devilish deal too long
out of Botany Bay.
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