CHAPTER I.
“And a little child shall lead them.”
“Wee Davie” was the only child of William Thorburn, blacksmith. The child had reached the age in which he could venture, with prudence and reflection, on a journey from one chair to another, his wits kept alive by maternal warnings of “Tak’ care, Davie; mind the fire, Davie.” And when his journey was ended in safety, and he looked over his shoulder with a cry of joy to his mother, he was rewarded, in addition to the rewards of his own brave and adventurous spirit, by such a smile as equalled only his own, and by the well-merited approval of “Weel done, Davie!”
Davie was the most powerful and influential member of the household. Neither the British fleet, nor the French army, nor the Armstrong gun, nor the British Constitution had the power of doing what Davie did. They might as well have tried to make a primrose grow or a lark sing! He was, for example, a wonderful stimulus to labour. His father, the smith, had been rather disposed to idleness before his son’s arrival. He did not take to his work on cold mornings as he might have done, and was apt to neglect many opportunities which offered themselves of bettering his condition; and Jeanie was easily put off by some plausible objection when she urged her husband to make an additional honest penny to keep the house. But “the bairn” became a new motive to exertion; and the thought of leaving him and Jeanie more comfortable, in case sickness laid the smith aside, or death took him away, became like a new sinew to his powerful arm, as he wielded the hammer, and made it ring the music of hearty work on the sounding anvil. The meaning of benefit-clubs, sick-societies, and penny-banks was fully explained by “wee Davie.”
Davie also exercised a remarkable influence on his father’s political views and social habits. The smith had been fond of debates on political questions, and no more sonorous growl of discontent than his could be heard against the powers that be, the injustice done to the masses, and the misery which was occasioned by class legislation. He had also made up his mind not to be happy or contented, but only to endure life as a necessity laid upon him, until the required reforms in Church and State, at home and abroad, had been attained.
“Isn’t he a bonnie bit bairn?”
See [page 100].
But his wife, without uttering a syllable on matters which she did not pretend even to understand, and by a series of acts out of Parliament, by reforms in household arrangements, by introducing good bills to her own House of Commons, and by a charter, whose points were chiefly very commonplace ones, such as a comfortable meal, a tidy home, a clean fireside, a polished grate, above all, a cheerful countenance and womanly love—these radical changes had made her husband wonderfully fond of his own house. He was, under this teaching, getting every day too contented for a patriot, and too happy for a man in such an ill-governed world. His old companions could not at last coax him out at night. He was lost as a member of one of the most philosophical clubs in the neighbourhood. His old pluck, they said, was gone. The wife, it was alleged by the patriotic bachelors, had “cowed” him, and driven all the spirit out of him. But “wee Davie” completed this revolution.