TO MON. JAMES SMITH,
MAUCHLINE.
[James Smith, of whom Burns said he was small of stature, but large of soul, kept at that time a draper’s shop in Mauchline, and was comrade to the poet in many a wild adventure.]
Monday Morning, Mossgiel, 1786.
My Dear Sir,
I went to Dr. Douglas yesterday, fully resolved to take the opportunity of Captain Smith: but I found the Doctor with a Mr. and Mrs. White, both Jamaicans, and they have deranged my plans altogether. They assure him that to send me from Savannah la Mar to Port Antonio will cost my master, Charles Douglas, upwards of fifty pounds; besides running the risk of throwing myself into a pleuritic fever, in consequence of hard travelling in the sun. On these accounts, he refuses sending me with Smith, but a vessel sails from Greenock the first of September, right for the place of my destination. The Captain of her is an intimate friend of Mr. Gavin Hamilton’s, and as good a fellow as heart could wish: with him I am destined to go. Where I shall shelter, I know not, but I hope to weather the storm. Perish the drop of blood of mine that fears them! I know their worst, and am prepared to meet it;—
“I’ll laugh an’ sing, an’ shake my leg,
As lang’s I dow.”
On Thursday morning, if you can muster as much self-denial as to be out of bed about seven o’clock, I shall see you, as I ride through to Cumnock. After all, Heaven bless the sex! I feel there is still happiness for me among them:
“O woman, lovely woman! Heaven design’d you
To temper man!—we had been brutes without you.”[159]
R. B.