“Yes, I do,” replied the bar-master.
“Weel, then, gin that be a’ that’s necessary, your whisky casks may dispute Christianity wi’ ony Protestant Bishop in the hale country.” This clinched the argument.
Hawkie’s besetting sin was an inveterate love of ardent spirits. “I am surprised, Hawkie,” said a person remonstrating with him one day on his dissolute life, “that a person of your knowledge and intellect can degrade himself by drinking whisky until you are deprived of reason, and with whom the brute could justly dispute pre-eminence. I would allow you two glasses per day, if you can’t want it, but not more.”
“Now, that’s fair,” replied the wit; “but will ye lodge’t in a public-house? Man, ye dinna ken what I hae to do. My forefathers, and foremithers, too, were a’ sober folk, and I hae had to drink for them a’. Ye see, they ran in debt to the British Government, and left me to pay’t; and when I cudna do’t I got an easy settlement wi’ the folks o’ the Exchequer, on condition that I was to pay’t up by instalments, and wherever I saw a house wi’ reading abune the door-head, ‘British spirits sold here,’ to pay in my dividend; and there was nae fear o’ it comin’ to them.”
Hawkie once had a watch, and the only one, moreover, that ever beat in his fob. “It didna cost me muckle,” he said. “I bocht it at a sale ae nicht, and the match o’t against time was never in onybody’s pouch, for it gaed a’ the four-and-twenty hours in the first ane after I row’d it up.”
“You are well acquainted with the but and ben end of the ‘Land of Cakes,’ Hawkie,” said a gentleman to him.
“Ay, man,” replied the wit; “I micht throw the halter ower the neck o’ my stilt, and it would turn in o’ its ain accord to its quarters for the nicht, without happin’ or windin’ in ony corner o’t.”
“It’s a wonder, Hawkie, that ye can live,” said another. “A man o’ your intellect, trampin’ up and down among a’ the riff-raff that beg the country.”
“Oh, but man, is that a’ ye ken,” replied the indomitable one; “I hae a profession to support—I’m a collector o’ poor’s rates.”
“You must have a surplus of funds,” continued the gentleman; “for I think you are a talented and industrious collector.”