“Are ye really in your seven natural senses—or can I believe my ain een? I could almost believe some warlock had thrown glamour into them,” said Nanse staring me broad in the face.
“Take a good look, gudewife, for seeing’s believing,” quo’ I; and then continued, without drawing breath or bridle, at full birr—
“Or if the baking line does not please ye, what say ye to binding him regularly to a man-cook? There he’ll see life in all its variorums. Losh keep us a’, what an insight into the secrets of roasting, brandering, frying, boiling, baking, and brewing—nicking of geese’s craigs—hacking the necks of dead
chickens, and cutting out the tongues of leeving turkeys! Then what a steaming o’ fat soup in the nostrils; and siccan a collection o’ fine smells, as would persuade a man that he could fill his stomach through his nose! No weather can reach such cattle: it may be a storm of snow twenty feet deep, or an even-down pour of rain, washing the very cats off the house tops; when a weaver is shivering at his loom, with not a drop of blood at his finger nails, and a tailor like myself, so numb with cauld, that instead of driving the needle through the claith, he brogs it through his ain thumb—then, fient a hair care they; but, standing beside a ranting, roaring, parrot-coal fire, in a white apron and a gingham jacket, they pour sauce out of ae pan into another, to suit the taste of my Lord this, and my Lady that, turning, by their legerdemain, fish into fowl, and fowl into flesh; till, in the long run, man, woman, and wean, a’ chew and champ away, without kenning more what they are eating than ye ken the day ye’ll dee, or whether the Witch of Endor wore a demity falderal, or a manco petticoat.”
“Weel,” cried Nanse, half rising to go ben the house, “I’ll sit nae langer to hear ye gabbling nonsense like a magpie. Mak’ Benjie what ye like; but ye’ll mak’ me greet the een out o’ my head.”
“Hooly and fairly,” said I; “Nanse, sit still like a woman, and hear me out;” so, giving her a pat on the shouther, she sat her ways down, and I resumed my discourse.
“Ye’ve heard, gudewife, from Benjie’s own mouth, that he has made up his mind to follow out the trade of a gentleman;—who has put such outrageous notions in his head I’m sure I’ll not pretend to guess at. Having never myself been above daily bread, and constant work—when I could get it—I dare not presume to speak from experience; but this I can say, from having some acquaintances in the line, that, of all easy lives, commend me to that of a gentleman’s gentleman. It’s true he’s caa’d a flunky, which does not sound quite the thing; but what of that? what’s in a name? pugh! it does not signify a bawbee—no, nor that pinch of snuff: for, if we descend to particulars, we’re all flunkies together, except his Majesty on the throne.—Then William Pitt is his flunky—and half the house of Commons
are his flunkies, doing what he bids them, right or wrong, and no daring to disobey orders, not for the hair in their heads—then the Earl waits on my Lord Duke—Sir Something waits on my Lord Somebody—and his tenant, Mr So-and-so, waits on him—and Mr So-and-so has his butler—and the butler has his flunky—and the shoeblack brushes the flunky’s jacket—and so on. We all hang at one another’s tails like a rope of ingans—so ye observe, that any such objection in the sight of a philosopher like our Benjie, would not weigh a straw’s weight.
“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?”