CHAPTER XIX.
"See yonder poor o'er-labour'd wight,
So abject, mean, and vile,
Who begs a brother of the earth
To give him leave to toil;
And see his lordly fellow-worm
The poor petition spurn."—Burns.
Work failed me about the end of June 1828; and, acting on the advice of a friend who believed that my style of cutting inscriptions could not fail to secure for me a good many little jobs in the churchyards of Inverness, I visited that place, and inserted a brief advertisement in one of the newspapers, soliciting employment. I ventured to characterize my style of engraving as neat and correct; laying especial emphasis on the correctness, as a quality not very common among the stone-cutters of the north. It was not a Scotch, but an English mason, who, when engaged, at the instance of a bereaved widower, in recording on his wife's tombstone that a "virtuous woman is a crown to her husband," corrupted the text, in his simplicity, by substituting "5s." for the "crown." But even Scotch masons do make odd enough mistakes at times, especially in the provinces; and I felt it would be something gained could I but get an opportunity of showing the Inverness public that I had at least English enough to avoid the commoner errors. My verses, thought I, are at least tolerably correct: could I not get some one or two copies introduced into the poet's corner of the Inverness Courier or Journal, and thus show that I have literature enough to be trusted with the cutting of an epitaph on a gravestone? I had a letter of introduction from a friend in Cromarty to one of the ministers of the place, himself an author, and a person of influence with the proprietors of the Courier; and, calculating on some amount of literary sympathy from a man accustomed to court the public through the medium of the press, I thought I might just venture on stating the case to him. I first, however, wrote a brief address, in octo-syllabic quatrains, to the river which flows through the town, and gives to it its name;—a composition which has, I find, more of the advertisement in it than is quite seemly, but which would have perhaps expressed less confidence had it been written less under the influence of a shrinking timidity, that tried to reassure itself by words of comfort and encouragement.
I was informed that the minister's hour for receiving visitors of the humbler class was between eleven and twelve at noon; and, with the letter of introduction and my copy of verses in my pocket, I called at the manse, and was shown into a little narrow ante-room, furnished with two seats of deal that ran along the opposite walls. I found the place occupied by some six or seven individuals—more than half their number old withered women, in very shabby habiliments, who, as I soon learned from a conversation which they kept up in a grave under-tone, about weekly allowances, and the partialities of the session, were paupers. The others were young men, who had apparently serious requests to prefer anent marriage and baptism; for I saw that one of them was ever and anon drawing from his breast-pocket a tattered copy of the Shorter Catechism, and running over the questions; and I overheard another asking his neighbour "who drew up the contract lines for him," and "where he had got the whisky." The minister entered; and as he passed into the inner room, we all rose. He stood for a moment in the doorway, and, beckoning on one of the young men—him of the Catechism—they went in together, and the door closed. They remained closeted together for about twenty minutes or half an hour, and then the young man went out; and another young man—he who had procured the contract lines and the whisky—took his place. The interview in this second case, however, was much shorter than the first; and a very few minutes served to despatch the business of the third young man; and then the minister, coming to the doorway, looked first at the old women and then at me, as if mentally determining our respective claims to priority; and, mine at length prevailing—I know not on what occult principle—I was beckoned in. I presented my letter of introduction, which was graciously read; and though the nature of the business did strike me as ludicrously out of keeping with the place, and it did cost me some little trouble to suppress at one time a burst of laughter, that would, of course, have been prodigiously improper in the circumstances, I detailed to him in a few words my little plan, and handed him my copy of verses. He read them aloud with slow deliberation.