CHAPTER III.
MESSRS. HARPY, QUIRKY, AND MACFARISEE.
From the earliest period of which I can remember, I had fixed upon pursuing the career of a soldier. Notwithstanding the grim specimens I had seen of it, during my father's service in the States, I deemed it a life of glitter, change, and jollity—a chain of pleasures—a long and romantic panorama. I saw only scarlet and feathers, gold lace, the glitter of epaulettes and the flash of steel, with music and sunshine; and from amid this chaos came forth those airy castles and brilliant visions, which the mind of every imaginative and impulsive boy can fashion so readily—and too readily at times for his own peace; as such fragile creations are but ill calculated to stand the rough shock of awakening, or the stern realities of every-day life.
So it was with me. My new occupation, with its intolerable monotony, seemed a death-blow to all my hopes and romantic fancies; while the manner and bearing of Messrs. Harpy, Quirky, and Macfarisee, were in no way calculated to reconcile me to my lot, or to enhance the value of the dog's pittance they doled out me, and a few other drudges of the quill. If, after a trial, I liked (ugh!) the law, I was to be indentured for five years, and to commence my legal studies at the college—to dive deep into "Stair's Institutes," "Dirlton's Doubts," and other light literature of a similar kind: money was to be raised to enable me pass muster; but my growing repugnance to a civil life caused many delays in making the final arrangements.
It was my misfortune to have to do with three of the worst specimens of those legal and religious charlatans who bring discredit on a profession which, for three hundred years, has shed a brilliance over Scottish literature and Scottish society. If any such, now living, recognize themselves in my delineation, the resemblance is entirely fortuitous, and they had better not boast of it.
They had, I have said, a vast amount of "sharp practice," and law proved a dear commodity to those who dealt with them.
The first partner was a wealthy idler, who gave himself insufferable airs, and affected to be "a man about town;" but then he brought business to the firm, and gave it an air of respectability; the second was a legal bully, miserly and underbred, longheaded and narrow-hearted; for Mr. Quirky had been educated in one of the many charitable institutions with which the city abounds, and had come forth into the world a master in the science of subtlety, and without an emotion of sympathy for anything human or divine.
Macfarisee was one of the most amusing of rogues. With the vanity of the first and the subtlety of the second, he covered his many failings by a bland aspect of meek sanctity, and that entire garb of accurate blackcloth which, with a long visage and a white necktie, go far to impose upon the simple in Scotland.
He was an elder, and reputed an upright pillar of the Church, and on each successive Sunday might be seen, with hands meekly folded, standing behind the brass platter wherein the offerings of the charitable were dropped. He never hid his holy candle under a bushel, but subscribed only to charities which published lists of the donors; he outwardly and vehemently eschewed strong waters, laughter, gaiety, the world, the flesh, and the devil; and yet, withal, had privately the reputation of being on the best possible terms with the latter.
He presided at all meetings for the conversion of Jews, Sepoys, and Ojibbeways; he inveighed against Sunday travelling, and the laxity of the present age; he harangued most feelingly on the benefit that must accrue from the moral, social, intellectual, and religious improvement of Caffres and Hottentots; while his unfortunate employés were reduced to the veriest of all white slavery, and, toiling fourteen hours out of the four-and-twenty, wrote their eyes blind and dim, during the dreary watches of many a winter night, long after all were hushed in sleep, and the nightly psalms and prayers, with which (in the way of business) he edified the neighbourhood, were ended. On one hand he patronized Bible Societies, and gave flannels to the poor; on the other, he had ungodly yearnings towards the possessions of the rich, whom he spoiled, to use his own phraseology, "even as the Egyptians were spoiled by the Jews of old;" for, as a conveyancer of other people's property into his own breeches pocket, Macfarisee had few equals in Scotland. He was one of a knot of small provincial notorities, who hovered about the Lord Advocate and the city M.P.'s, who got up public dinners and testimonials for their own "glorification," for the purpose of hearing themselves speak, and getting their otherwise very obscure names into the local journals.