CHAPTER XXIII.—CATCHING A TARTAR.
Fr. Sol. O, prennez miséricorde! ayez pitié de moy!
Pist. Moy shall not serve, I will have forty moys;
For I will fetch thy rim out at thy throat,
In drops of crimson blood.Henry V.
From the first moment I clapped eye on the caricature thing of a coat, that Tammie Bodkin had, in my absence, shaped out for Cursecowl the butcher, I foresaw, in my own mind, that a catastrophe was brewing for us; and never did soldier gird himself to fight the French, or sailor prepare for a sea-storm, with greater alacrity, than I did to cope with the bull-dog anger, and buffet back the uproarious vengeance of our heathenish customer.
At first I thought of letting the thing take its natural course, and of threaping down Cursecowl’s throat that he must have been feloniously keeping in his breath when Tammie took his measure; and, moreover, that as it was the fashion to be straight-laced, Tammie had done his utmost trying to make him look like his betters; till, my conscience checking me for such a nefarious intention, I endeavoured, as became me in the relations of man, merchant, and Christian, to solder the matter peaceably, and show him, if there was a fault committed, that there
was no evil intention on my side of the house. To this end I dispatched the bit servant wench, on the Friday afternoon, to deliver the coat, which was neatly tied up in brown paper, and directed—“Mr Cursecowl, with care,” and to buy a sheep’s head; bidding her, by way of being civil, give my kind compliments, and enquire how Mr and Mrs Cursecowl, and the five little Miss Cursecowls, were keeping their healths, and trusting to his honour in sending me a good article. But have a moment’s patience.
Being busy at the time, turning a pair of kuttikins for old Mr Mooleypouch the mealmonger, when the lassie came back, I had no mind of asking a sight of the sheep’s head, as I aye like the little blackfaced, in preference to the white, fat, fozy Cheviot breed; but, most providentially, I catched a gliskie of the wench passing the shop window, on the road over to Jamie Coom the smith’s, to get it singed, having been dispatched there by her mistress. Running round the counter like lightning, I opened the sneck, and halooed to her to wheel to the right about, having, somehow or other, a superstitious longing to look at the article. As I was saying, there was a Providence in this, which, at the time, mortal man could never have thought of.
James Batter had popped in with a newspaper in his hand, to read me a curious account of a mermaid, that was seen singing a Gaelic song, and combing its hair with a tortoise-shell comb, someway terrible far north about Shetland, by a respectable minister of the district, riding home in the gloaming after a presbytery dinner. So, as he was just taking off his spectacles cannily, and saying to me—“And was not that droll?”—the lassie spread down her towel on the counter, when, lo and behold! such an abominable spectacle! James Batter observing me run back, and turn white, put on his glasses again, cannily taking them out of his well-worn shagreen case, and, giving a stare down at the towel, almost touched the beast’s nose with his own.
“And what, in the name of goodness, is the matter?” quo’ James Batter; “ye seem in a wonderful quandary.”
“The matter!” answered I, in astonishment; looking to see
if the man had lost his sight or his senses—“the matter! who ever saw a sheep’s head with straight horns, and a visnomy all colours of the rainbow—red, blue, orange, green, yellow, white, and black?”
“’Deed it is,” said James, after a nearer inspection; “it must be a lowsy-naturay. I’m sure I have read most of Buffon’s books, and I have never heard tell of the like. It’s gey an’ queerish.”
“’Od, James,” answered I, “ye take every thing very canny; you’re a philosopher, to be sure; but, I daresay, if the moon was to fall from the lift, and knock down the old kirk, ye would say no more than ‘it’s gey an’ queerish!’”
“Queerish, man! do ye not see that?” added I, shoving down his head mostly on the top of it. “Do ye not see that? awful, most awful! extonishing!! Do ye not see that long beard? Who, in the name of goodness, ever was an eyewitness to a sheep’s head, in a Christian land, with a beard like an unshaven Jew crying ‘owl clowes,’ with a green bag over his left shoulder!”
“Dog on it,” said James, giving a fidge with his hainches; “Dog on it, as I am a living sinner, that is the head of a Willie-goat.”
“Willie or Nannie,” answered I, “it’s not meat for me; and never shall an ounce of it cross the craig of my family:—that is as sure as ever James Batter drave a shuttle. Give counsel in need, James: what is to be done?”
“That needs consideration,” quo’ James, giving a bit hoast. “Unless he makes ample apology, and explains the mistake in a feasible way, it is my humble opinion that he ought to be summoned before his betters. That is the legal way to make him smart for his sins.”
At last a thought struck me, and I saw farther through my difficulties than ever mortal man did through a millstone; but, like a politician, I minted not the matter to James. Keeping my tongue cannily within my teeth, I then laid the head, wrapped up in the bit towel, in a corner behind the counter; and, turning my face round again to James, I put my hands into my breeches-pockets, as if nothing in the world had happened,
and ventured back to the story of the mermaid. I asked him how she looked—what kind of dress she wore—if she swam with her corsets—what was the colour of her hair—where she would buy the tortoise-shell comb—and so on; when, just as he was clearing his pipe to reply, who should burst open the shop-door like a clap of thunder, with burning cat’s een, and a face as red as a soldier’s jacket, but Cursecowl himself, with the new killing-coat in his hand,—which, giving tremendous curse, the words of which are not essentially necessary for me to repeat, being an elder of our kirk, he made play flee at me with such a birr, that it twisted round my neck, and mostly blinding me, made me doze like a tottum. At the same time, to clear his way, and the better to enable him to take a good mark, he gave James Batter a shove, that made him stoiter against the wall, and snacked the good new farthing tobacco-pipe, that James was taking his first whiff out of; crying, at the same blessed moment—“Hold out o’ my road, ye long withered wabster. Ye’re a pair of havering idiots; but I’ll have pennyworths out of both your skins, as I’m a sinner!”
What was to be done? There was no time for speaking, for Cursecowl, foaming like a mad dog with passion, seized hold of the ell-wand, which he flourished round his head like a Highlander’s broadsword, and stamping about, with his stockings drawn up his thighs, threatened every moment to commit bloody murder.
If James Batter never saw service before, he learned a little of it that day, being in a pickle of bodily terror not to be imagined by living man; but his presence of mind did not forsake him, and he cowered for safety and succour into a far corner, holding out a web of buckram before him—me crying all the time, “Send for the town-officer! will ye not send for the town-officer?”
You may talk of your General Moores, and your Lord Wellingtons, as ye like; but never, since I was born, did I ever see or hear tell of anything braver than the way Tammie Bodkin behaved, in saving both our precious lives, at that blessed nick of time, from touch-and-go jeopardy: for, when Cursecowl
was rampauging about, cursing and swearing like a Russian bear, hurling out volleys of oaths that would have frighted John Knox, forbye the like of us, Tammie stole in behind him like a wild-cat, followed by Joseph Breekey, Walter Cuff, and Jack Thorl, the three apprentices, on their stocking soles; and, having strong and dumpy arms, pinned back his elbows like a flash of lightning, giving the other callants time to jump on his back, and hold him like a vice; while, having got time to draw my breath, and screw up my pluck, I ran forward like a lion, and houghed the whole concern—Tammie Bodkin, the three faithful apprentices, Cursecowl and all, coming to the ground like a battered castle.
It was now James Batter’s time to come up in line; and though a douce man, (being savage for the insulting way that Cursecowl had dared to use him,) he dropped down like mad, with his knees on Cursecowl’s breast, who was yelling, roaring, and grinding his buck-teeth like a mad bull, kicking right and spurring left with fire and fury; and, taking his Kilmarnock off his head, thrust it, like a battering-ram, into Cursecowl’s mouth, to hinder him from alarming the neighbourhood, and bringing the whole world about our ears. Such a stramash of tumbling, roaring, tearing, swearing, kicking, pushing, cuffing, rugging and riving about the floor!! I thought they would not have left one another with a shirt on: it seemed a combat even to the death. Cursecowl’s breath was choked up within him like wind in an empty bladder, and when I got a gliskie of his face, from beneath James’s cowl, it was growing as black as the crown of my hat. It feared me much that murder would be the upshot, the webs being all heeled over, both of broad cloth, buckram, cassimir, and Welsh flannel; and the paper shapings and worsted runds coiled about their throats and bodies like fiery serpents. At long and last, I thought it became me, being the head of the house, to sound a parley, and bid them give the savage a mouthful of fresh air, to see if he had anything to say in his defence.
Cursecowl, by this time, had forcible assurance of our ability to overpower him, and finding he had by far the worst of it, was obliged to grow tamer, using the first breath he got to cry
out, “A barley, ye thieves! a barley! I tell ye, give me wind. There’s not a man in nine of ye!”
Finding our own strength, we saw, by this time, that we were masters of the field; nevertheless, we took care to make good terms when they were in our power; nor would we allow Cursecowl to sit upright, till after he had said, three times over, on his honour as a gentleman, that he would behave as became one.
After giving his breeches-knees a skuff with his loof, to dad off the stoure, he came, right foot foremost, to the counter side, while the laddies were dighting their brows, and stowing away the webs upon their ends round about, saying, “Maister Wauch, how have ye the conscience to send hame such a piece o’ wark as that coat to ony decent man? Do ye dare to imagine that I am a Jerusalem spider, that I could be crammed, neck and heels, into such a thing as that? Fye, shame—it would not button on yourself, man, scarecrow-looking mortal though ye be!”
James Batter’s blood was now up, and boiling like an old Roman’s; so he was determined to show Cursecowl that I had a friend in court, able and willing to keep him at stave’s-end. “Keep a calm sough,” said James Batter, interfering, “and not miscall the head of the house in his own shop; or, to say nothing of present consequences, by way of showing ye the road to the door, perhaps Maister Sneckdrawer, the penny-writer, ’ll give ye a caption-paper with a broad margin, to claw your elbow with at your leisure, my good fellow.”
“Pugh, pugh,” cried Cursecowl, snapping his finger and thumb at James’s beak, “I do not value your threatening an ill halfpenny. Come away out your ways to the crown of the causey, and I’ll box any three of ye, over the bannys, for half-a-mutchkin. But ’odsake, Batter, my man, nobody’s speaking to you,” added Cursecowl, giving a hack now and then, and a bit spit down on the floor; “go hame, man, and get your cowl washed; I dare say you have pushioned me, so I have no more to say to the like of you. But now, Maister Wauch, just speaking hooly and fairly, do you not think black burning
shame of yourself, for putting such an article into any decent Christian man’s hand, like mine?”
“Wait a wee—wait a wee, friend, and I’ll give ye a lock salt to your broth,” answered I, in a calm and cool way; for, being a confidential elder of Maister Wiggie’s, I kept myself free from the sin of getting into a passion, or fighting, except in self-defence, which is forbidden neither by law nor gospel; and, stooping down, I took up the towel from the corner, and, spreading it upon the counter, bade him look, and see if he knew an auld acquaintance!
Cursecowl, to be such a dragoon, had some rational points in his character; so, seeing that he lent ear to me with a smirk on his rough red face, I went on: “Take my advice as a friend and make the best of your way home, killing-coat and all; for the most perfect will sometimes fall into an innocent mistake, and, at any rate, it cannot be helped now. But if ye show any symptom of obstrapulosity, I’ll find myself under the necessity of publishing you abroad to the world for what you are, and show about that head in the towel for a wonder to broad Scotland, in a manner that will make customers flee from your booth, as if it was infected with the seven plagues of Egypt.”
At sight of the goat’s-head, Cursecowl clapped his hand on his thigh two or three times, and could scarcely muster good manners enough to keep himself from bursting out a-laughing.
“Ye seem to have found a fiddle, friend,” said I; “but give me leave to tell you, that ye’ll may be find it liker a hanging-match than a musical matter. Are you not aware that I could hand you over to the sheriff, on two special indictments? In the first place, for an action of assault and batterification, in cuffing me, an elder of our kirk, with a sticked killing-coat, in my own shop; and, in the second place, as a swindler, imposing on his Majesty’s loyal subjects, taking the coin of the realm on false pretences, and palming off goat’s flesh upon Christians, as if they were perfect Pagans.”
Heathen though Cursecowl was, this oration alarmed him in a jiffie, soon showing him, in a couple of hurries, that it was necessary for him to be our humble servant: so he said, still
keeping the smirk on his face, “Keh, keh, it’s not worth making a noise about after all. Gie me the jacket, Mansie, my man, and it’ll maybe serve my nephew, young Killim, who is as lingit in the waist as a wasp. Let us take a shake of your paw over the counter, and be friends. Bye-ganes should be bye-ganes.”
Never let it be said that Mansie Wauch, though one of the king’s volunteers, ever thrust aside the olive branch of peace; so ill-used though I had been, to say nothing of James Batter, who had got his pipe smashed to crunches, and one of the eyes of his spectacles knocked out, I gave him my fist frankly.
James Batter’s birse had been so fiercely put up, and no wonder, that it was not so easily sleeked down; so, for a while, he looked unco glum, till Cursecowl insisted that our meeting should not be a dry one; nor would he hear a single word on me and James Batter not accepting his treat of a mutchkin of Kilbagie.
I did not think James would have been so doure and refractory—funking and flinging like old Jeroboam; but at last, with the persuasion of the treat, he came to, and, sleeking down his front hair, we all three took a step down to the far end of the close, at the back street, where Widow Thamson kept the sign of “The Tankard and the Tappit Hen;” Cursecowl, when we got ourselves seated, ordering in the spirits with a loud rap on the table with his knuckles, and a whistle on the landlady through his fore-teeth, that made the roof ring. A bottle of beer was also brought; so, after drinking one another’s healths round, with a tasting out of the dram glass, Cursecowl swashed the rest of the raw creature into the tankard, saying,—“Now take your will o’t; there’s drink fit for a king; that’s real ‘Pap-in.’”
He was an awful body, Cursecowl, and had a power of queer stories, which, weel-a-wat, did not lose in the telling. James Batter, beginning to brighten up, hodged and leuch like a nine-year-old; and I freely confess, for another, that I was so diverted, that, I dare say, had it not been for his fearsome oaths, which made our very hair stand on end, and were enough to
open the stone-wall, we would have both sate from that time to this.
We got the whole story of the Willie-goat, out and out; it seeming to be, with Cursecowl, a prime matter of diversion, especially that part of it relating to the head, by which he had won a crown-piece from Deacon Paunch, who wagered that the wife and me would eat it, without ever finding out our mistake. But, aha, lad!
The long and the short of the matter was this. The Willie-Goat had, for eighteen year, belonged to a dragoon marching regiment, and, in its better days, had seen a power of service abroad; till, being now old and infirm, it had fallen off one of the baggage-carts, and got its leg broken on the road to Piershill, where it was sold to Cursecowl, by a corporal, for half-a-crown and a dram. The four quarters he had managed to sell for mutton, like lightning—this one buying a jigget, that one a back-ribs, and so on. However, he had to weather a gey brisk gale in making his point good. One woman remarked that it had an unearthly, rank smell; to which he said, “No, no—ye do not ken your blessings, friend,—that’s the smell of venison, for the beast was brought up along with the deers in the Duke’s parks.” And to another wife, that, after smell-smelling at it, thought it was a wee humphed, he replied, “Faith, that’s all the thanks folk gets for letting their sheep crop heather among the Cheviot-Hills;” and such like lies. But as for the head, that had been the doure business. Six times had it been sold and away, and six times had it been brought back again. One bairn said, that her “mother didna like a sheep’s head with horns like these, and wanted it changed for another one.” A second one said, that “it had tup’s een, and her father liked wether mutton.” A third customer found mortal fault with the colours, which, she said, “were not canny, or in the course of nature.” What the fourth one said, and the fifth one took leave to observe, I have stupidly forgotten, though, I am sure, I heard both; but I mind one remarked, quite off-hand, as she sought back her money, that, “unless sheep could do without beards, like their neighbours, she would keep the pot boiling
with a piece beef, in the mean time.” After all this, would any mortal man believe it, Deacon Paunch, the greasy Daniel Lambert that he is, had taken the wager, as I before took opportunity to remark, that our family would swallow the bait? But, aha, he was off his eggs there!
James and me were so tickled with Cursecowl’s wild, outrageous, off-hand, humoursome way of telling his crack, that, though sore with neighering, none of the two of us ever thought of rising; Cursecowl chapping in first one stoup, and then another, and birling the tankard round the table, as if we had been drinking dub-water. I dare say I would never have got away, had I not slipped out behind Lucky Thamson’s back—for she was a broad fat body, with a round-eared mutch, and a full-plaited check apron—when she was drawing the sixth bottle of small beer, with her corkscrew between her knees; Cursecowl lecturing away, at the dividual moment, like a Glasgow professor, to James Batter, whose een were gathering straws, on a pliskie he had once, in the course of trade, played on a conceited body of a French sicknurse, by selling her a lump of fat pork to make beef-tea of to her mistress, who was dwining in the blue Beelzebubs.
Ohone, and woes me, for old Father Adam and the fall of man! Poor, sober, good, honest James Batter was not, by a thousand miles, a match for such company. Every thing, however, has its moral, and the truth will out. When Nanse and me were sitting at our breakfast next morning, we heard from Benjie, who had been early up fishing for eels at the water-side, that the whole town-talk was concerning the misfortunate James Batter, who had been carried home, totally incapable, far in the night, by Cursecowl and an Irish labourer—that sleeped in Widow Thamson’s garret—on a hand-barrow, borrowed from Maister Wiggie’s servant-lass, Jenny Jessamine.
CHAPTER XXIV.—JAMES BATTER AND THE MAID OF DAMASCUS.
He chose a mournful muse
Soft pity to infuse;
He sung the Weaver wise and good,
By too severe a fate,
Fallen, fallen, fallen, fallen,
Fallen from his high estate,
And weltering in his blood.Dryden Revised.
On the morning after the debosh with Mr Cursecowl, my respected friend, James Batter, the pattern of steadiness and sobriety, awoke in a terrible pliskie. The decent man came to the use of his senses as from a trance, and scarcely knew either where he was, or whether his head or heels were uppermost. He found himself lying without his Kilmarnock, from which he might have received deadly damage, being subject to the rheumatics in the cuff of the neck; and every thing about him was in a most fearful and disjaskit state. It was a long time before he could, for the life of him, bring his mind or memory to a sense of his condition, having still on his corduroy trowsers, and his upper and under vest, besides one of his stockings:—his hat, his wig, his neckcloth, his shoes, his coat, his snuff-box, his spectacles, and the other stocking, all lying on the floor, together with a table, a chair, a candlestick, with a broken candle, which had been knocked over;—the snuffers standing upright, being sharp in the point, and having stuck in the deal floor.
It was a terrible business! and might have been a life-long lesson to every one, of the truth of St Paul’s maxim, that “evil communication corrupts good manners;”—Cursecowl being the most incomprehensible fellow that ever breathed the breath of life. To add to his calamities, James found, on attempting to rise, that he had, in some way or other, of which he had not a shadow of recollection, dismally sprained his left
ankle, which, to his consternation, was swelled like a door-post, and as blue as his apron. There was also a black ugly lump on his brow, as big as a pigeon’s egg, which was horrible to look at in the bit glass. Many a gallant soldier escaped from Waterloo with less scaith—and that they did. Poor innocent sowl! I pitied him from the very bottom of my heart—as who would not?
Having got an inkling of the town-talk by breakfast-time, and knowing also that many a one—such is the corruption of human nature—would like to have a hair in the neck of James, by taking up an evil report, I remembered within myself that a friend in need is a friend indeed, and cannily papped up the close, after I had got myself shaved, to see how the land lay. And a humbling spectacle it was! James could scarcely yet be said to be himself, for his eyes were like scored collops, and his stomach was so sick that his face was like ill-bleached linen—pale as a dishclout. When he tried to speak, it was between a bock and a hiccup with him, and my feeling for his situation was such—knowing, as I did, all the ins and outs of the business—that I could not help being very wae for him. It therefore behoved me to make Nanse send him a cup of well-made tea, to see if it would act as a settler, but his heart stood at it, as if it had been ’cacuana, and do as he liked, he could not let a drop of it down his craig. When the wife informed me of this, I at last luckily remembered the old saying about giving one a hair of the dog that bit him; and I made poor James swallow a thimbleful of malt spirits—the real unadulterated creatur, with wonderfully good effects. Though then in his sixty-first year, James declares on his honour as a gentleman, that this was the first time he ever had fallen a victim to the barley-fever!
How could we do otherwise! it afforded Nanse and I great pleasure—and no mistake—in acting the part of good Samaritans, by pouring oil and wine into his wounds; I having bound up his brow with a Sunday silk-napkin, and she having fomented his unfortunate ankle with warm water and hog’s lard. The truth is, that I found myself in conscience bound and obligated to take a deep interest in the decent man’s distresses, he having
come to his catastrophe in a cause of mine, and having fallen a victim to the snares and devices of Cursecowl, instead of myself, for whom the vagabond’s girn was set. Providence decided that, in this particular case, I should escape; but a better man, James Batter, was caught in it by the left ankle. What will a body say there?
The web of Lucky Caird, which James had promised to carry home to her on the Saturday night, was still in the loom, and had I been up to the craft, I would not have hesitated to have driven the shuttle myself till I had got it off hand for him; but every man to his trade; so afraid of consequences, I let the batter and the bobbin-box lie still, trusting to Lucky Caird’s discretion, and my friend’s speedy recovery. But the distress of James Batter was not the business of a day. In the course of the next night, to be sure, he had some natural sleep, which cleared his brain from the effects of that dangerous and deluding drink, the “Pap-in;” but his ankle left him a grievous lameter hirpling on a staff; and, although his brown scratch and his Kilmarnock helped to hide the bump upon his temple, the dregs of it fell down upon his e’e-bree, which, to the consternation of everybody, became as green as a docken leaf.
My friend, however, be it added to this, was not more a sufferer in body than in estate; for the illness, being of his own bringing on, he could not make application to the Weavers’ Society—of which he had been a regular member for forty odd years—for his lawful sick-money. But, being a philosopher, James submitted to his bed of thorns without a murmur; Nanse and I soothing his calamities, as we best could, by a bowl of sheep-head broth; a rizzar’d haddock; a tankard of broo-and-bread; a caller egg; a swine’s trotter; and other circumstantialities needless to repeat—as occasion required.
As for Cursecowl, the invincible reprobate, so ashamed was he of his infamous conduct, that he did not dare, for the life in his body, to show himself before my shop-window—far less in my presence—for more than a week; yet, would ye believe it! he made a perfect farce of the whole business among his own wauf cronies; and, instead of repentance, I verily believe, would not have cared twopence to have played me the same pliskie that
he did my douce and worthy friend. But away with him! he is not worth speaking about; and ye’ll get nothing from a sow but—grumph!
Being betimes on the mending order, James sent down, one to request, with his compliments, that I would hand him up by the bearer old Taffy with the Pigtail’s bundle of papers,—as having more leisure in his hands than either he liked, or well knew how to dispose of, it might afford him some diversion to take a reading of them, for the purpose of enquiring farther into the particulars of the Welsh gentleman’s history—which undoubtedly was a wee mysterious; consisting of matters lying heads and thraws; and of odds and ends, that no human skill could dovetail into a Christian consistency.
On the night of the next day—I mind it weel, for it was on that dividual evening that Willie, the minister’s man, married Mysie Clouts, the keeper of the lodging-house called the Beggars’ Opera—it struck me, seeing the general joy of the weans on the street, and the laughing, daffing, and hallabuloo that they were making, that poor James must be lonely at his ingle side, and that a drink of porter and a crack would do his old heart good. Accordingly, I made Nanse send the bit lassie, our servant, Jenny Heggins, for a couple of bottles of Deacon Jaffrey’s best brown stout, asking if he could pawn his word anent its being genuine, as it was for a gentleman in delicate health. So, brushing the sawdust off the doup of one of them, and slipping it into my coat pocket, which was gey an’ large, I popped at leisure up the close to pay my neighbour a friendly visit.
’Od, but comfort is a grand thing. If ever ye saw an ancient patriarch, there was one. James was seated in his snug old easy-chair by the fireside, as if he had been an Edinburgh Parliament House lawyer, studying his hornings, duplies, and fugie warrants, with his left leg paraded out on a stool, with a pillow smoothed down over it, and all the Welshman’s papers docketed on the bit table before him. The cat was lying streaked out on the hearth, pur-purring away to herself, and the kettle by the fire cheek was singing along with her, as if to cheer the heart of their mutual master. As for Mr Batter, he looked as prejinct as a pikestaff, and so taken up was he with his papers,
that, when I asked him how he felt, his answer, to my wonderment, was, that “in the Song of Songs, Solomon had likened the nose of his beloved to the tower of Lebanon, which looketh towards Damascus.” So brown was he in his studies, that for a while, I feared the fall had produced some crack in his pan, and that his seven senses had gone a wool-gathering; but the story will out, as ye will hear, and being naturally a wee-camstairie, I gave him time to gather the feet of his faculties before pressing him too hard; but even the sight of the bottle of porter toasting by the cheek of the fire, hardly brought him at once to his right mind.
Mr Batter’s noddle, however, after a little patience, clearing up, we leisurely discussed between us the porter, which was in prime condition, with a ream as yellow as a marigold; together with half a dozen of butter-bakes, crimp and new-baked, it being batch-day with Thomas Burlings, who, like his father and grandfather before him, have been notorious in the biscuit department. It soon became clear to me, that the dialogue about Lebanon and Damascus, which was followed up with a clishmaclaver anent dirks, daggers, red cloaks, and other bloody weapons which made all my flesh grue, had some connexion with Taffy’s papers on the table—out of which James had been diverting himself by reading bits here and there, at random like.
In the course of our confab, he told me a monstrous heap about them; but, in general, the things were so out of the course of Providence, and so queer and leeing-like, that I, for one, would not believe them without solemn affidavy. Indeed, I began at length to question within myself—for the subject naturally resolved itself into two heads; firstly, whether Taffy’s master might not have had a bee in his bonnet; or, secondly, whether he was a person not over-scrupulous regarding the matter of truth. As for James, he declared him a nonsuch, and said, that although poor, he would not have hesitated to have given him sixpence for a lock of his hair, just to keep beside him for a keepsake; (did any body ever hear such nonsense?) Before parting, he insisted that I should bear with him, till he read me over the story he had just finished as I came in, and
which had been running in his noddle. At such a late hour, for it was now wearing on to wellnigh ten o’clock, I was not just clear about listening to any thing bloody; but not to vex the old boy who, I am sure, would not have sleeped a wink through the night for disappointment, had he not got a free breast made of it, I at long and last consented—provided his story was not too long. My chief particularity on this point, as I should mention, was, that it was past Benjie’s bedtime, and the callant had a hoast, which required all his mother’s as well as my own good doctoring—having cost us two bottles of Dantzic black beer with little effect; besides not a few other recommendations of friends and skielly acquaintances.
It was best, therefore, to consent with a good grace; so, after clearing his windpipes, James wiped the eyes of his spectacles with the corner of his red-check pocket-napkin; and thereafter fixing them on his beak, he commenced preaching away in grand style at some queer outlandish stuff, which fairly baffled my gumption. I must confess, however, both in fairness to Taffy and to James, that, as I had been up since five in the morning, (having pawned my word to send home Duncan Imrie, the heel-cutter’s new duffle great-coat by breakfast time, as he had to go into the Edinburgh leather-market by eleven,) my een were gathering straws; and it was only at the fearsome parts that I could for half a moment keep them sundry. “Many men,” however, “many minds,” as the copy-line book says; and as every one has a right to judge for himself, I requested James to copy the concern out for me; and ye here have it, word for word, without subtraction, multiplication, or addition.