XVI
GEORDIE'S OOT-TURN
It was Geordie Lorimer who first taught me to curl. This I still reckon a great kindness, for I have gone from strength to strength till I am now upon the verge of tankard skiphood. Besides, Geordie's besetting sin still clinging close, I had hoped in this social way the more readily to win his friendship, with a view to his deliverance.
Some of the old elders looked askance at my frivolity, for Sanderson's "Mountain Dew" flowed freely at every bonspiel, and it was generally understood that all bigoted teetotalism was justly suspended till the ice vanished in the spring. These aforesaid elders had no sympathy with men who tasted standing up, or who took their "Mountain Dew" unwarmed.
They would gravely quote the scriptural admonition that all things should be done decently and in order, adding the exposition, logically deduced, that the more important the transaction, the more imperative that order and decency should be observed. For which reason they took their whisky hot, and hallowed by the gentler name of "toddy." At eventide they took it, within the sacred precincts of their own firesides, and immediately after family worship. Many a time and oft the very lips which fervently sang the psalm—
"Like Hermon's dew, the dew that doth,"
were the same that sampled Sanderson's with solemn satisfaction.
The session clerk once presented to the court a letter from a worthy but wandering temperance orator, craving permission to give his celebrated "dog talk" in St. Cuthbert's on a Sabbath afternoon.
"I move that the kirk be no' granted," said Archie M'Cormack. "He'll be revilin' the ways o' men far abune him. Ma faither aye took a drappy ilka nicht, haudin' his bonnet in his haun' the while. He wad drink the health o' Her Majesty ('God bless her,' he aye said), and mebbe ane to the auld kirk in bonnie Scotland, an' mebbe ane to the laddies wha used to rin wi' him aboot the braes, an' mebbe then he wad hae jist ane mair to Her Majesty, for ma faither was aye uncommon loyal at the hinner end. But atween him an' ma mither he aye kent fine when to stop.
"An' a' oor faithers tasted afore they gaed to bed, an' they a' dee'd wi' their faces to the licht; an' I wadna gie ane o' them for a wheen o' yir temperance haverers wi' their dog talks on the Sabbath day."
