The World's Greatest Books - Volume 6 Part 42

Without a.s.sistance Mrs. Wilson contrived to maintain herself and her children in their old, comfortable home. The house had still, within and without, the same suns.h.i.+ny cleanliness, and the garden was still famous over all other gardens. But the sweetest flower of the garden, and the joy and pride of her mother's heart, was her daughter Hannah. Well might she be proud of her! At sixteen, Hannah Wilson was, beyond a doubt, the prettiest girl in the village, and the best. Her chief characteristic was modesty. Her mind was like her person: modest, graceful, gentle and generous above all.

Our village beauty had fairly reached her twentieth year without a sweetheart; without the slightest suspicion of her having ever written a love-letter on her own account, when, all of a sudden, appearances changed. A trim, elastic figure, not unaccompanied, was descried walking down the shady lane. Hannah had gotten a lover!

Since the new marriage act, we, who belong to the country magistrates, have gained a priority over the rest of the parish in matrimonial news.

We (the privileged) see on a work-day the names which the Sabbath announces to the generality. One Sat.u.r.day, walking through our little hall, I saw a fine athletic young man, the very image of health and vigour, mental and bodily, holding the hand of a young woman, who was turning bashfully away, listening, and yet not seeming to listen, to his tender whispers. Hannah! And she went aside with me, and a rapid series of questions and answers conveyed the story of the courts.h.i.+p. "William was," said Hannah, "a journeyman hatter, in B----. He had walked over to see the cricketing, and then he came again. Her mother liked him.

Everybody liked him--and she had promised. Was it wrong?"

"Oh, no! And where are you to live?" "William had got a room in B----.

He works for Mr. Smith, the rich hatter in the market-place, and Mr.

Smith speaks of him, oh, so well! But William will not tell me where our room is. I suppose in some narrow street or lane, which he is afraid I shall not like, as our common is so pleasant. He little thinks--anywhere--" She stopped suddenly. "Anywhere with him!"

The wedding-day was a glorious morning.

"What a beautiful day for Hannah!" was the first exclamation at the breakfast-table. "Did she tell you where they should dine?"

"No, ma'am; I forgot to ask."

"I can tell you," said the master of the house, with the look of a man who, having kept a secret as long as it was necessary, is not sorry to get rid of the burthen. "I can tell you--in London."

"In London?"

"Yes. Your little favourite has been in high luck. She has married the only son of one of the best and richest men in B----, Mr. Smith, the great hatter. It is quite a romance. William Smith walked over to see a match, saw our pretty Hannah, and forgot to look at the cricketers. He came again and again, and at last contrived to tame this wild dove, and even to get the _entree_ of the cottage. Hearing Hannah talk is not the way to fall out of love with her. So William, finding his case serious, laid the matter before his father, and requested his consent to the marriage. Mr. Smith was at first a little startled. But William is an only son, and an excellent son; and after talking with me, and looking at Hannah, the father relented. But, having a spice of his son's romance, and finding that he had not mentioned his station in life, he made a point of its being kept secret till the wedding-day. I hope the shock will not kill Hannah."

"Oh, no! Hannah loves her husband too well."

And I was right. Hannah has survived the shock. She is returned to B----, and I have been to call on her. She is still the same Hannah, and has lost none of her old habits of kindness and grat.i.tude. She did indeed just hint at her trouble with visitors and servants; seemed distressed at ringing the bell, and visibly shrank from the sound of a double knock. But in spite of these calamities Hannah is a happy woman.

The double rap was her husband's, and the glow on her cheek, and the smile of her lips and eyes when he appeared spoke more plainly than ever: "Anywhere with him!"

DAVID MOIR

Autobiography of Mansie Wauch

David Macbeth Moir was born at Musselburgh, Scotland, Jan. 5, 1798, and educated at the grammar school of the Royal Burgh and at Edinburgh University, from which he received the diploma of surgeon in 1816. He practised as a physician in his native town from 1817 until 1843, when, health failing, he practically withdrew from the active duties of his profession.

Moir began to write in both prose and verse for various periodicals when quite a youth, but his long connection with "Blackwood's Magazine" under the pen name of "Delta", began in 1820, and he became a.s.sociated with Christopher North, the Ettrick Shepherd, and others of the Edinburgh coterie distinguished in "Noctes Ambrosianae." He contributed to "Blackwood," histories, biographies, essays, and poems, to the number of about 400. His poems were esteemed beyond their merits by his generation, and his reputation now rests almost solely on the caustic humour of his "Autobiography of Mansie Wauch," published in 1828, a series of sketches of the manner of life in the shop-keeping and small-trading cla.s.s of a Scottish provincial town at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Moir died at Dumfries on July 6, 1851.

_I.--Mansie's Forebears and Early Life_

Some of the rich houses and great folk pretend to have histories of the ancientness of their families, which they can count back on their fingers almost to the days of Noah's Ark, and King Fergus the First, but it is not in my power to come further back than auld grand-faither, who died when I was a growing callant. I mind him full well. To look at him was just as if one of the ancient patriarchs had been left on the earth, to let succeeding survivors witness a picture of h.o.a.ry and venerable eld.

My own father, auld Mansie Wauch, was, at the age of thirteen, bound a 'prentice to the weaver trade, which he prosecuted till a mortal fever cut through the thread of his existence. Alas, as Job says, "How time flies like a weaver's shuttle!" He was a decent, industrious, hard-working man, doing everything for the good of his family, and winning the respect of all who knew the value of his worth. On the five-and-twentieth year of his age he fell in love with, and married, my mother, Marion Laverock.

I have no distinct recollection of the thing myself, but there is every reason to believe that I was born on October 13, 1765, in a little house in the Flesh-Market Gate, Dalkeith, and the first thing I have any clear memory of was being carried on my auntie's shoulders to see the Fair Race. Oh! but it was a grand sight! I have read since the story of Aladdin's Wonderful Lamp, but that fair and the race, which was won by a young birkie who had neither hat nor shoon, riding a philandering beast of a horse thirteen or fourteen years auld, beat it all to sticks.

In time, I was sent to school, where I learned to read and spell, making great progress in the Single and Mother's Carritch. What is more, few could fickle me in the Bible, being mostly able to spell it all over, save the second of Ezra and the seventh of Nehemiah, which the Dominie himself could never read through twice in the same way, or without variation.

Being of a delicate make--nature never intended me for the naval or military line, or for any robustious profession--I was apprenticed to the tailoring trade. Just afterwards I had a terrible stound of calf-love, my first flame being the minister's la.s.sie, Jess, a buxom and forward queen, two or three years older than myself. I used to sit looking at her in the kirk, and felt a droll confusion when our eyes met. It dirled through my heart like a dart. Fain would I have spoken to her, but aye my courage failed me, though whiles she gave me a smile when she pa.s.sed. She used to go to the well every night with her two stoups to draw water, so I thought of watching to give her two apples which I had carried in my pocket for more than a week for that purpose.

How she started when I stappit them into her hand, and brushed by without speaking!

Jamie Coom, the blacksmith, who I aye jealoused was my rival, came up and asked Jess, with a loud guffaw, "Where is the tailor?" When I heard that, I took to my heels till I found myself on the little stool by the fireside with the hamely sound of my mother's wheel b.u.m-b.u.mming in my lug, like a gentle lullaby.

The days of the years of my 'prentices.h.i.+p having glided cannily over, I girt myself round about with a proud determination of at once cutting my mother's ap.r.o.n-string. So I set out for Edinburgh in search of a journeyman's place, which I got the very first day in the Gra.s.smarket.

My lodging was up six pairs of stairs, in a room which I rented for half-a-crown a week, coals included; but my heart was sea-sick of Edinburgh folk and town manners, for which I had no stomach. I could form no friendly acquaintances.h.i.+p with a living soul. Syne I abode by myself, like St. John in the Isle of Patmos, on spare allowance, making a sheep-head serve me for three days' kitchen.

Everything around me seemed to smell of sin and pollution, and often did I commune with my own heart, that I would rather be a sober, poor, honest man in the country, able to clear my day and way by the help of Providence, than the provost himself, my lord though he be, or even the mayor of London, with his velvet gown trailing for yards in the glaur behind him, or riding about the streets in a coach made of clear crystal and wheels of beaten gold.

But when my heart was sickening unto death, I fell in with the greatest blessing of my life, Nanse Cromie, a bit wench of a la.s.sie frae the Lauder direction, who had come to be a servant in the flat below our workshop, and whom I often met on the stairs.

If ever a man loved, and loved like mad, it was me; and I take no shame in the confession. Let them laugh who like; honest folk, I pity them; such know not the pleasures of virtuous affection. Matters were by and bye settled full tosh between us; and though the means of both parties were small, we were young, and able and willing to help one another.

Nanse and me laid our heads together towards the taking a bit house in the fore-street of Dalkeith, and at our leisure bought the plenis.h.i.+ng.

Two or three days after Maister Wiggie, the minister, had gone through the ceremony of tying us together, my sign was nailed up, painted in black letters on a blue ground, with a picture of a jacket on one side and a pair of shears on the other; and I hung up a wheen ready-made waistcoats, caps, and Kilmarnock cowls in the window. Business in fact, flowed in upon us in a perfect torrent.

Both Nanse and I found ourselves so proud of our new situation that we slipped out in the dark and had a prime look with a lantern at the sign, which was the prettiest ye ever saw, although some sandblind creatures had taken the neatly painted jacket for a goose.

_II.--The Resurrection Men_

A year or two after the birth and christening of wee Benjie, my son, I was cheated by a swindling black-aviced Englishman out of some weeks'

lodgings and keep, and a pair of new velveteen knee-breeches.

Then there arose a great surmise that some loons were playing false with the kirkyard; and, on investigation, it was found that four graves had been opened, and the bodies harled away to the college. Words cannot describe the fear, the dool, and the misery it caused, and the righteous indignation that burst through the parish.

But what remead? It was to watch in the session-house with loaded guns, night about, three at a time. It was in November when my turn came. I never liked to go into the kirkyard after darkening, let-a-be sit through a long winter night with none but the dead around us. I felt a kind of qualm of faintness and downsinking about my heart and stomach, to the dispelling of which I took a thimbleful of spirits, and, tying my red comforter about my neck, I marched briskly to the session-house.

Andrew Goldie, the pensioner, lent me his piece and loaded it to me. Not being well acquaint with guns, I kept the muzzle aye away from me, as it is every man's duty not to throw his precious life into jeopardy. A bench was set before the sessions-house fire, which bleezed brightly. My spirits rose, and I wondered, in my bravery, that a man like me should be afraid of anything. n.o.body was there but a towzy, carroty-haired callant.

The night was now pitmirk. The wind soughed amid the headstones and railings of the gentry (for we must all die), and the black corbies in the steeple-holes cackled and crawed in a fearsome manner. Oh, but it was lonesome and dreary; and in about an hour the laddie wanted to rin awa hame; but, trying to look brave, though half-frightened out of my seven senses, I said, "Sit down, sit down; I've baith whiskey and porter wi' me. Hae, man, there's a c.a.w.ker to keep your heart warm; and set down that bottle of Deacon Jaffrey's best brown stout to get a toast."

The wind blew like a hurricane; the rain began to fall in perfect spouts. Just in the heart of the brattle the grating of the yett turning on its rusty hinges was but too plainly heard.

"The're coming; c.o.c.k the piece, ye sumph!" cried the laddie, while his red hair rose, from his pow like feathers. "I hear them tramping on the gravel," and he turned the key in the lock and brizzed his back against the door like mad, shouting out, "For the Lord's sake, prime the gun, or our throats will be cut before you can cry Jack Robinson."

I did the best I could, but the gun waggled to and fro like a c.o.c.k's tail on a rainy day. I trust I was resigned to die, but od' it was a frightful thing to be out of one's bed to be murdered in an old session-house at the dead hour of the night by devils incarnate of ressurrection men with blacked faces, pistols, big sticks, and other deadly weapons.

After all, it was only Isaac, the bethrel, who, when we let him in, said that he had just keppit four ressurrectioners louping over the wall. But that was a joke. I gave Isaac a dram to kep his heart up, and he sung and leuch as if he had been boozing with some of his drucken cronies; for feint a hair cared he about auld kirkyards, or vouts, or dead folk in their winding-sheets, with the wet gra.s.s growing over them. Then, although I tried to stop him, he began to tell stories of Eirish ressurrectioners, and ghaists, seen in the kirkyard at midnight.

Suddenly a clap like thunder was heard, and the laddie, who had fallen asleep on the bench, jumped up and roared "Help!" "Murder!" "Thieves!"

while Isaac bellowed out, "I'm dead! I'm killed!--shot through the head!