I do not think Peter jealoused I ever had so much in my noddle; but when he saw I had put him to his mettle, he did his best to give me satisfactory answers to my queries, saying, that till gold came in fashion, it would not be for my own interest or that of my family, to refuse bank-notes, for which he would, any day of the year, give me as many quarter loaves as I could carry, to say nothing of coarse flour for the prentices’ scones, and bran for the pigs—that the national debt would take care of itself long after both him and I were gathered to our fathers: and that individual debt was a much more hazardous, pressing, and personal concern, far more likely to come home to our more immediate bosoms and businesses—that the best species of reform was every one’s commencing to make amendment in their own lives and conversations—that poor rates were likely to be worse before they were better; and that, as to the Catholic question,—“But, Mansie,” said he, “it would give me great pleasure to hear your candid and judicious opinion of Popery and the Papists.”
I saw, with half an e’e, that Peter was trying to put me to my mettle, and I devoutly wished that I had had James Batter at my elbow to have given him play for his money—James being the longest-headed man that ever drove a shuttle between warp and woof; but most fortunately, just as I was going to say, that “every honest man, who wished well to the good of his country, could only have one opinion upon that subject,”—we came to the by-road, that leads away off on the right-hand side down to Hawthornden, and we observed, from the curious ringle, that one of the naig’s fore-shoon was loose; which consequently put an end to the discussion of this important national question, before Peter and I had time to get it comfortably settled to the world’s satisfaction.
The upshot was, that we were needcessitated to dismount, and lead the animal by the head forward to Kittlerig, where Macturk Sparrible keeps his smith’s shop; in order that, with his hammer, he might make fast the loose nails: and that him
and his foresman did in a couple of hurries; me and Peter looking over them with our hands in our big-coat pockets, while they pelt-pelted away with the beast’s foot between their knees, as if we had been a couple of grand gentlemen incog.; and so we were to him.
After getting ourselves again decently mounted, and giving Sparrible a consideration for his trouble, Peter took occasion, from the horse casting its shoe, to make a few apropos moral observations, in the manner of the Rev. Mr Wiggie, on the uncertainties which it is every man’s lot to encounter in the weariful pilgrimage of human life. “There is many a slip ’tween the cup and the lip,” said Peter.
“And, indeed, Mr Farrel, ye never spoke a truer word,” said I. “We are here to-day—yonder to-morrow; this moment we are shining like the mid-day sun, and on the next, pugh! we go out like the snuff of a candle. ‘Man’s life,’ as Job observes, ‘is like a weaver’s shuttle.’”
“But, Maister Wauch,” quo’ Peter, who was a hearer of the Parish Church, “you dissenting bodies aye take the black side of things; never considering that the doubtful shadows of affairs sometimes brighten up into the cloudless daylight. For instance, now, there was an old fellow-apprentice of my father’s, who, like myself, was a baker, his name was Charlie Cheeper; and, both his father and mother dying when he was yet hardly in trowsers, he would have been left without a hame in the world, had not an old widow woman, who had long lived next door to them, and whose only breadwinner was her spinning-wheel, taken the wee wretchie in to share her morsel. For several years, as might naturally have been expected, the callant was a perfect deadweight on the concern, and perhaps, in her hours of greater distress, the widow regretted the heedlessness of her Christian charity; but Charlie had a winning way with him, and she could not find it in her heart to turn him to the door. By the time he was seven—and a ragged coute he was as ever stepped without shoes—he could fend for himself, by running messages—holding horses at shop doors—winning bools and selling them—and so on; so that, when he had collected half-a-crown in a penny pig, the widow sent him to the school, where he got on like a hatter,
and in a little while, could both read and write. When he was ten, he was bound apprentice to Saunders Snaps in the Back-row, whose grandson has yet, as you know, the sign of the Wheat Sheaf; and for five years he behaved himself like his betters.
“Well, sir, when his time was out, Charlie had an ambition to see the world; and, by working for a month or two as a journeyman in the Candlemaker-row at Edinburgh, he raked as much together as took him up to London in the steerage of a Leith smack. For several years nothing was heard of him, except an occasional present of a shawl, or so on, to the widow, who had been so kind to him in his helpless years; and at length a farewell present of some little money came to her, with his blessing for past favours, saying that he was off for good and all to America.
“In the course of time, Widow Amos became frail and sand-blind. She was unable to work for herself, and the charity she had shown to others no one seemed disposed to extend to her. Her only child, Jeanie Amos, was obliged to leave her service, and come home to the house of poverty, to guard her mother’s grey hairs from accident, and to divide with her the little she could make at the trade of mangling; for, with the money that Charlie Cheeper had sent, before leaving the country, the old woman had bought a calender, and let it out to the neighbours at so much an hour; honest poverty having many shifts.