CHAPTER II.
"Say, ye red gowns that aften here, Hae toasted cakes to Katie's beer, Gin e'er thir days hae had their peer, Sae blythe, sae daft! Ye'll ne'er again in life's career, Sit half sae saft."
Elegy on John Hogg.
We returned to town; and, after threading a few of the narrower lanes, entered by a low door into a long dark room, dimly lighted by a fire. A tall thin woman was employed in skinning a bundle of dried fish at a table in a corner.
"Where's the guidman, Kate?" said my companion, changing the sweet pure English in which he had hitherto spoken for his mother tongue.
"John's ben in the spence," replied the woman. "Little Andrew, the wratch, has been makin' a totum wi' his faither's ae razor, an' the puir man's trying to shave himsel yonder, an' girnan like a sheep's head on the tangs."
"Oh, the wratch! the ill-deedie wratch!" said John, stalking into the room in a towering passion, his face covered with suds and scratches—"I might as weel shave mysel wi' a mussel shillet. Rob Ferguson, man, is that you!"
"Wearie warld, John," said the poet, "for a' oor philosophy."
"Philosophy!—it's but a snare, Rob—just vanity an' vexation o' speerit, as Solomon says. An' isna it clear heterodox besides? Ye study an' study till your brains gang about like a whirligig; an' then, like bairns in a boat that see the land sailin', ye think it's the solid yearth that's turnin' roun'. An' this ye ca' philosophy; as if David
hadna tauld us that the warld sits coshly on the waters, an' canna be moved."
"Hoot, John," rejoined my companion, "it's no me, but Jamie Brown, that differs wi' you on these matters. I'm a Hoggonian, ye ken. The auld Jews were, doubtless, gran' Christians, an' wherefore no guid philosophers too? But it was cruel o' you to unkennel me this mornin' afore six, an' I up sae lang at my studies the nicht afore."