“I would be real glad—it would be naething but a pleasure; and I’ll ne’er forget how guid you were to me when I was in trouble about Johnnie, and aye gied me hope. Poor laddie! next month he’s coming down to be married—and I’m sure I hope he’ll be weel off in a guid wife, for he canna but be a guid man, considering what a son he’s been to me.”
“He will be very well off,” said Mrs Laurie; “and poor little July goes away next month, does she? Has Jenny come in yet, Menie? We have scarcely had time to settle in our new house, Mrs Lithgow; but I will remember your kind offer, and thank you. How dark the night grows—and it looks like snow.”
“I’ll have to be gaun my ways,” said the visitor, rising; “it’s a lanesome road, and I’m no heeding about leaving my house, and a’ the grand new things Johnnie’s sent me, their lane in the dark. I’ll bid you good night, ladies, kindly, and I’m real blithe to see you in the countryside again.”
She was gone, and the room fell into a sudden hush of silence, broken by nothing but the faint rustling of a moved hand, or the fall, now and then, of ashes on the hearth. The bustle and excitement of the “flitting” were over—the first pleasure of being home in their own country was past. Grey and calm their changed fate came down upon them, with no ideal softening of its everyday realities. This sliding pannel here opens upon their bed; this little table serves all purposes of living; these four dim walls, and heavy raftered roof, shut in their existence. Now, through the clear frosty air without, a merry din breaks into the stillness. It is little Davie from the cothouse over the way, who has just escaped from the hands which were preparing him for rest, and dares brothers and sisters in a most willing race after him, their heavy shoes ringing upon the beaten way. Now you hear them coming back again, leading the truant home, and by-and-by all the urchins are asleep, and the mother closes the ever open door. So good night to life and human fellowship. Now—none within sight or hearing of us, save Jenny humming a broken song, on the other side of the wooden partition, which, sooth to say, is Jenny’s bed—we are left alone.
Menie, bending, in her despondent attitude, over the fire, which throws down, now and then, these ashy flakes upon the hearth—our mother, pausing from her work, to bend her weary brow upon her hand. So very still, so chill and forsaken. Not one heart in all the world, except the three which beat under this thatched roof, to give anything but a passing thought to us or our fate; and nothing to look to but this even path, winding away over the desolate lands of poverty into the skies.
Into the skies!—woe for us, and our dreary human ways, if it were not for that blessed continual horizon line; so we do what we have not been used to do before—we read a sad devout chapter together, and have a faltering prayer; and then for silence and darkness and rest.
Say nothing to your child, good mother, of the bitter thoughts that crowd upon you, as you close your eyes upon the wavering fire-light, and listen, in this stillness, to all the stealthy steps and touches of the wakeful night. Say nothing to your mother, Menie, of the tears which steal down between your cheek and your pillow, as you turn your face to the wall. What might have been—what might have been; is it not possible to keep from thinking of that? for even Jenny mutters to herself, as she lies wakefully contemplating the glow of her gathered fire—mutters to herself, with an indignant fuff, and hard-drawn breath, “I wish her muckle pleasure of her will: she’s gotten her will: and I wadna say but she minds him now—a bonnie lad like yon!”
CHRONOLOGICAL CURIOSITIES: WHAT SHALL WE COLLECT?
Is knowledge, like Saturn, destined to devour her own masculine offspring, and leave only the weak to live to propagate follies? If Common Sense, the strong born, has escaped, it is because Knowledge has been deceived, like Saturn, with a stone, not very easy of digestion, nor promising to add much to her substance. But this survivor, Common Sense, has the effeminate yet numerous progeny to contend with, who, with a busy impertinence, multiply absurdities, and put them forth under the glorifying name of their parent, Knowledge. We rejoice, therefore, to see a laudable attempt being made to rescue knowledge from the cramming in of uncommon and worthless things, and to substitute for the people’s use a knowledge of “common things.” And we hope an aggregate addition of the bone and muscle of a little more common honesty, and true genuine natural feeling, will be the result of the wholesomer food. The people have been long enough imposed on by false titles; or the “Useful Knowledge,” the pretence of the age, has been exhausted, and resort had to a very useless substitute.
It is not long since that we read the question and answer scheme of an examination of a retired village school, consisting of labourers’ children; one of the questions being, “What is chronology?” “What is its derivation?” Answer, “Derived from two Greek words,” &c. Will any one think that children so taught become wiser or better? This may not be an isolated instance. It seems possible that chronology may become rather too fashionable a study, and engage a host of collectors of valueless nothings. The neglected science has certainly some arrears to make up. Some few years ago we were authoritatively told that “History” is nothing but an “old Almanac.” Since which time, History and her sister, Chronology, have been discarded servants—out of place, and glad to pick up a few pence here and there as charwomen, in all sorts of odds and ends of corners, to sweep away time-collected dust and rubbish. Their industry seems likely to be rewarded at last. A few of the old worshippers, taking advantage of this exhaustion of “useful knowledge,” benevolently lend them a helping hand, and are trying to persuade the public that the dust was gold dust, or better than gold dust, and the rubbish a treasure, and advising that it should all be swept in again—and where?—into our National Gallery! and doubtless their next step will be to appoint a Parliamentary Commission, not so much for the purpose of sifting it, as of issuing treatises and lectures upon the value and national importance of this new-old treasure trove. So that the public may look to this, that, instead of having their eyes gratified by the beauties of art, they will be disgusted with its deformities; while their heads will be so stuffed with its history, as to leave no room for a thought of its excellence, or a sentiment to be derived from it.