"Weel, Reuben, I canna tell, things may be as ye say—only there is very little appearance o' them at present, when the wages o' you and your faither put thegither are hardly the half o' what ane o' ye could hae made. But ae thing is certain—they who bode for a silk gown always get a sleeve o't."
"Nonsense, woman! ye're as bad as him," was the reply of his father; "wherefore would ye encourage the callant in his havers? I wonder, seeing the distress we are a' brought to, he doesna think shame to speak o' such a thing. Mak a fortune by the newfangled system, indeed!—my truly! if it continue meikle langer, he winna be able to get brose without butter."
"Weel, faither," was the answer of Reuben, "we'll see; but you must perceive that there is no great improvement can take place, let it be what it will, without doing injury to somebody. And it is our duty to watch every opportunity to make the most of it."
"In my belief, the laddie is out o' his head," rejoined the father; "but want will bring him to his senses."
Reuben, however, soon found that it became almost impossible to keep soul and body together by the labours of the loom. He therefore began to speculate on what he ought to do; and, like my honoured namesake, the respectable poet, but immortal ornithologist, he took unto himself a PACK, and, with it upon his shoulders, he resolved to perambulate the Borders. There was no disgrace in the calling, for it is as ancient, perhaps more ancient, than nobility; and we are told that, even in the time of Solomon, "there were chapmen in the land in those days." Therefore Reuben Purves became a chapman. He, as his original trade might lead one to suppose, was purely a dealer in "soft" goods; and when he entered a farmhouse, among the bonny buxom girls, he would have flung his pack upon the table, and said—
"Here, now, my braw lassies; look ye here! Here's the real upright, downright, elegant, and irresistible muslin for frills, which no sweetheart upon this earth could have the power to withstand. And here's the gown-pieces—cheap, cheap—actually giein them awa—the newest, the most elegant patterns! Only look at them!—it is a sin to see them so cheap! Naething could be mair handsome! Now or never, lassies. Look at the ribands, too—blue, red, yellow, purple, green, plain, flowered, and gauze. Now is the time for buskin your cockernony—naething could withstand them wi' sic faces as yours—naething, naething, and that ye would find. It would be out o' the question to talk o't. Come, hinnies, only observe them, I'm sure ye canna but buy—or look at this lawn."
"O Reuben, man," they would have said, "they are very bonny; but we hae nae siller."
"Havers!" answered he; "young queans like you talking about siller! Sell your hair, dears, and buy lang lawn?"
Then did Reuben pull forth his scissors, and begin to exercise the functions of a hairdresser, in addition to his calling as a chapman—thinning, and sometimes almost cropping, the fair, the raven, the auburn, or the brown tresses of the serving-maids, and giving them his ribands and his cambrics in exchange for their shorn locks. The ringlets he disposed of to the hairdressers in Edinburgh, Newcastle, or Carlisle, and he confessed that he found it a very profitable speculation; and where the colour or texture of the hair was beautiful, he invariably preferred bartering for it, to receiving payment in money. This was a trait in Reuben's character, at the outset of his career as a speculator, which showed that he had a correct appreciation of the real principles of trade—that he knew the importance of barter, without which commerce could not exist; and it afforded an indication of the future merchant.
He was in the habit of visiting every town, village, and farm-stead within sixty miles of the Borders—to the north and to the south—and taking in the entire breadth of the island. His visits became as regular as clock-work. No merchant now-a-days knows more exactly the day and almost the hour when he may expect a visit from the traveller of the house with which he deals, accompanied with an invitation to drink a bottle of wine, and pay his account, than the people in the Border villages knew when Reuben would appear amongst them.