Nanse gave a mournful look, as if she was frighted I had grown demented, and only said, “Tak’ your ain way, gudeman; ye’se get your ain way for me, I fancy.”
Seeing her in this Christian state of resignation, I determined at once to hit the nail on the head, and put an end to the whole business as I intended. “Now, Nanse,” quo’ I, “to come to close quarters with ye, tell me candidly and seriously what ye think of a barber? Every one must allow it’s a canny and cozy trade.”
“A barber that shaves beards!” said Nanse. “’Od, Mansie, ye’re surely gaun gyte. Ye’re surely joking me all the time?”
“Joking!” answered I, smoothing down my chin, which was gey an’ rough—“Joking here or joking there, I should not think the settling of an only bairn in an honourable way of doing for all the days of his natural life, is any joking business. Ye dinna ken what ye’re saying, woman. Barbers! i’fegs, to turn up your nose at barbers! did ever living hear such nonsense! But to be sure, one can blame nobody if they speak to the best of their experience. I’ve heard tell of barbers, woman, about London, that rode up this street, and down that other street, in coaches and four, jumping out to every one that hallooed to them, sharping razors both on stone and strap, at the ransom of a penny the pair; and shaving off men’s beards, whiskers and all, stoop and roop, for a three-ha’pence. Speak of barbers! it’s all ye ken about it. Commend me to a safe employment, and a profitable. They may give others a nick, and draw blood, but catch them hurting themselves. They are not exposed to colds and rheumatics, from east winds and rainy weather; for they sit, in white aprons, plaiting hair into wigs for auld folks that have bell-pows, or making false curls for ladies that would fain like to look smart in the course of nature. And then they go from house to house, like gentlemen in the morning; cracking with Maister this or Madam that, as they soap their chins with scented-soap, or put their hair up in marching order either for kirk or playhouse. Then at their leisure, when
they’re not thraug at home, they can pare corns to the gentry, or give ploughmen’s heads the bicker-cut for a penny, and the hair into the bargain for stuffing chairs with; and between us, who knows—many rottener ship has come to land—but that some genty Miss, fond of plays, poems, and novels, may fancy our Benjie when he is giving her red hair a twist with the torturing irons, and run away with him, almost whether he will or not, in a stound of unbearable love!”
Here making an end of my discourse, and halting to draw breath, I looked Nanse broad in the face, as much as to say, “Contradict me if ye daur,” and, “What think ye of that now?”—The man is not worth his lugs, that allows his wife to be maister; and being by all laws, divine and human, the head of the house, I aye made a rule of keeping my putt good. To be candid, howsoever, I must take leave to confess, that Nanse, being a reasonable woman, gave me but few opportunities of exerting my authority in this way. As in other matters, she soon came, on reflection, to see the propriety of what I had been saying and setting forth. Besides, she had such a motherly affection towards our bit callant, that sending him abroad would have been the death of her.
To be sure, since these days—which, alas, and woe’s me! are not yesterday now, as my grey hair and wrinkled brow but too visibly remind me—such ups and downs have taken place in the commercial world, that the barber line has been clipped of its profits and shaved close, from a patriotic competition among its members, like all the rest. Among other things, hair-powder, which was used from the sweep on the lum-head to the king on the throne, is only now in fashion with the Lords of Session and valy-deshambles; and pig-tails have been cut off from the face of the earth, root and branch. Nevertheless, as I have taken occasion to make observation, the foundations of the cutting and shaving line are as sure as that of the everlasting rocks; beards being likely to roughen, and heads to require polling, as long as wood grows and water runs.
CHAPTER XXVII.—“PUGGIE, PUGGIE,”—A STORY WITHOUT A TAIL.
Saw ye Johnie coming? quo’ she,
Saw ye Johnie coming?
Wi’ his blue bonnet on his head,
And his doggie running.Old Ballad.
The welfare of the human race and the improvement of society being my chief aim, in this record of my sayings and doings through the pilgrimage of life, I make bold at the instigation of Nanse, my worthy wife, to record in black and white a remarkably curious thing, to which I was an eyewitness in the course of nature. I have little reluctance to consent, not only because the affair was not a little striking in itself—as the reader will soon see—but because, like Æsop’s Fables, it bears a good moral at the end of it.