It was in the pleasant month of June, sometime, maybe six or eight days, after the birth-day of our good old King George the Third—for I recollect the withering branches of lily-oak and flowers still sticking up behind the signs, and over the lamp-posts,—that my respected acquaintance and customer, Peter Farrel the baker, to whom I have made many a good suit of pepper-and-salt clothes—which he preferred from their not dirtying so easily with the bakehouse—called in upon me, requesting me, in a very pressing manner, to take a pleasure ride up with him the length of Roslin, in his good-brother’s bit phieton, to eat a
wheen strawberries, and see how the forthcoming harvest was getting on.
That the offer was friendly admitted not of doubt, but I did not like to accept for two-three reasons; among which were, in the first place, my awareness of the danger of riding in such vehicles—having read sundry times in the newspapers of folk having been tumbled out of them, drunk or sober, head-foremost, and having got eyes knocked ben, skulls cloured, and collar-bones broken; and, in the second place, the expense of feeding the horse, together with our feeding ourselves in meat and drink during the journey—let alone tolls, strawberries and cream, bawbees to the waiter, the hostler, and what not. But let me speak the knock-him-down truth, and shame the de’il,—above all, I was afraid of being seen by my employers wheeling about, on a work-day, like a gentleman, dressed out in my best, and leaving my business to mind itself as it best could.
Peter Farrel, however, being a man of determination, stuck to his text like a horse-leech; so, after a great to-do, and considerable argle-bargling, he got me, by dint of powerful persuasion, to give him my hand on the subject. Accordingly, at the hour appointed, I popped up the back loan with my stick in my hand—Peter having agreed to be waiting for me on the roadside, a bit beyond the head of the town, near Gallows-hall toll. The cat should be let
out of the pock by my declaring, that Nanse, the goodwife, had also a finger in the pie—as, do what ye like, women will make their points good—she having overcome me in her wheedling way, by telling me, that it was curious I had no ambition to speel the ladder of gentility, and hold up my chin in imitation of my betters.
That we had a most beautiful drive I cannot deny; for though I would not allow Peter to touch the horse with the whip, in case it might run away, fling, or trot ower fast—and so we made but slow progress—little more even than walking; yet, as I told him, it gave a man leisure to use his eyes, and make observation to the right and the left; and so we had a prime look of Eskbank, and Newbottle Abbey, and Melville Castle, and Dalhousie, and Polton, and Hawthornden, and Dryden woods—and the powder mills, the paper mills, the bleachfield—and so on. The day was bright and beautiful, and the feeling of summer came over our bosoms: the flowers blossomed and the birds sang; and, as the sun looked from the blue sky, the quiet of nature banished from our thoughts all the poor and paltry cares that embitter life, and all the pitiful considerations which are but too apt to be the only concerns of the busy and bustling, from their awaking in the morning to their lying down on the pillow of evening rest. Peter and myself felt this forcibly; he,
as he confessed to me, having entirely forgot the four pan-soled loaves that were, that morning, left by his laddie, Peter Crust, in the oven, and burned to sticks; and for my own part, do what I liked, I could not bring myself to mind what piece of work I was employed on the evening before, till, far on the road, I recollected that it was a pair of mouse-brown spatterdashes for worthy old Mr Mooleypouch the mealmonger.
Oh, it is a pleasant thing, now and then, to get a peep of the country! To them who live among shops and markets, and stone-walls, and butcher-stalls, and fishwives—and the smell of ready-made tripe, red herring, and Cheshire cheeses—the sights, and sounds, and smells of the country, bring to mind the sinless days of the world before the fall of man, when all was love, peace, and happiness. Peter Farrel and I were transported out of our seven senses, as we feasted our eyes on the beauty of the green fields. The bumbees were bizzing among the gowans and blue-bells; and a thousand wee birds among the green trees were churm-churming away, filling earth and air with music, as it were a universal hymn of gratitude to the Creator for his unbounded goodness to all his creatures. We saw the trig country lasses bleaching their snow-white linen on the grass by the waterside, and they too were lilting their favourite songs, Logan Water, the Flowers
of the Forest, and the Broom of the Cowdenknowes. All the world seemed happy, and I could scarcely believe—what I kent to be true for all that—that we were still walking in the realms of sin and misery. The milk-cows were nipping the clovery parks, and chewing their cuds at their leisure;—the wild partridges whidding about in pairs, or birring their wings with fright over the hedges;—and the blue-bonneted ploughmen on the road cracking their whips in wantonness, and whistling along amid the clean straw in their carts. And then the rows of snug cottages, with their kailyards and their goose-berry bushes, with the fruit hanging from the branches like ear-rings on the neck of a lady of fashion. How happy, thought we both—both Peter Farrel and me—how happy might they be, who, without worldly pride or ambition, passed their days in such situations, in the society of their wives and children. Ah! such were a blissful lot!
During our ride, Peter Farrel and I had an immense deal of rational conversation on a variety of matters, Peter having seen great part of the world in his youth, from having made two voyages to Greenland, during one of which he was very nearly frozen up—with his uncle, who was the mate of a whale-vessel. To relate all that Peter told me he had seen and witnessed in his far-away travels, among the white bears, and the frozen seas, would take up a great deal of the reader’s time,