When on a recent occasion I gave Jacob, in return for the pleasure of his conversation, a "lift" in my doctor's gig, he talked to me very confidentially of his "rounds." At first I imagined in my ignorance that, like the tailors of the parishes round about, he went from farm to farm prosecuting his calling and cobbling the shoes of half the countryside. I was buttressed in this opinion by his expressed pity or contempt for wearers of "clogs."
"Here's anither puir body wi' a pair o' clogs on his feet," Jacob would say; "and to think that for verra little mair than the craitur paid for them, I wad fit him wi' as soond a pair o' leather-soled shoon as were ever ta'en frae amang tanners' bark!"
I had also seen him start out with a thin-bladed cobbler's knife and the statutory piece of "roset" or resin wrapped in a palm's-breadth of soft leather. But, alas, all was a vain show. The knife was to be used in delicate surgical work upon the deceased at a pig-killing, and the resin was for splicing fishing-rods.
After a while I began by severe study to get to the bottom of a Do-Nothing's philosophy. To do the appointed task for the performance of which duty calls, man waits, and money will be paid, that is work to be avoided by every means—by procrastination, by fallacious promise, by prevarication, and (sad to have to say it) by the plainest of plain lying.
Whatever brings in money in the exercise of a trade, whatever must be finished within a given time, that needs the co-operation of others or prolonged and consecutive effort on his own part, is merely anathema to the Do-Nothing.
On the other hand, no house in the parish is too distant for him to attend at the "settin' o' the yaird" (the delving must, however, be done previously). On such occasions the Do-Nothing revels in long wooden pins with string wrapped mysteriously about them. He can turn you out the neatest shaped bed of "onions" and "syboes," the straightest rows of cabbages, and potato drills so level that the whole household feels that it must walk the straight path in order not to shame them. The wayfaring man though a fool, looks over the dyke, and says: "Thae dreels are Jacob's—there's nane like them in the countryside!"
This at least is Jacob's way of it.
But though all this is by the way of introduction to the particular Do-Nothing I have in my eye, it is not of Jacob that I am going to write. Jacob is indeed an enticing subject, and from the point of view of his wife, might be treated very racily. But, though I afterwards made Margate Irving's acquaintance (and may one day put her opinions on record), I have other and higher game in my mind.
This is none other than the Reverend James Tacksman, B.A., licentiate of the Original Marrow Kirk of Scotland. In fact, a clerical Do-Nothing of the highest class.
Now, to begin with, I will aver that there is no scorn in all this. "Jaimsie" is more to me than many worthy religious publicists, beneficed, parished, churched, stipended, and sustentationed to the eyes. He was not a very great man. He was in no sense a successful man, but—he was "Jaimsie."