When the dishes were removing, each had a large blue glass bowl full of water, and a clean calendered damask towel, put down by a smart flunkey before him; and many of them that had not helped themselves well to the wine while they were eating their steaks and French frigassees, were now vexed to death on that score, imagining that nothing remained for them but to dight their nebs and flee up.
Ignorant folk should not judge rashly, and the worthy town-council were here in error; for their surmises, however feasible, did the landlord wrong. In a minute they had fresh wine decanters ranged down before them, filled with liquors of all variety of colours, red, green, and blue; and the table was covered with dishes full of jargonelles and pippins, raisins and almonds, shell walnuts and plum-damases, with nutcrackers, and everything else they could think of eating; so that after drinking “The King, and long life to him,” and “The constitution of the country at home and abroad,” and “Success to trade,” and “A good harvest,” and “May ne’er waur be among us,” and “Botheration to the French,” and “Corny toes and short shoes to the foes of old Scotland,” and so on, their tongues began at length not to be so tacked; and the weight of their own dignity, that had taken flight before his lordship, came back and rested on their shoulders.
In the course of the evening, his lordship whispered to one of the flunkies to bring in some things—they could not hear what—as the company might like them. The wise ones thought within themselves that the best aye comes hindmost; so in brushed a powdered valet, with three dishes on his arm of twisted black things, just like sticks of Gibraltar-rock, but different in the colour.
Bailie Bowie helped himself to a jargonelle, and Deacon Purves to a wheen raisins; and my uncle, to show that he was not frightened, and kent what he was about, helped himself to one of the long black things, which, without much ceremony, he shoved into his mouth, and began to. Two or three more, seeing that my uncle was up to trap, followed his example, and chewed away like nine-year olds.
Instead of the curious-looking black thing being sweet as honey,—for so they expected,—they soon found they had catched a Tartar; for it had a confounded bitter tobacco taste. Manners, however, forbade them laying it down again, more especially as his lordship, like a man dumfoundered, was aye keeping his eye on them. So away they chewed, and better chewed, and whammelled them round in their mouths, first in one cheek, and then in the other, taking now and then a mouthful of drink to wash the trash down, then chewing away again, and syne another whammel from one cheek to the other, and syne another mouthful, while the whole time their een were staring in their heads like mad, and the faces they made may be imagined, but cannot be described. His lordship gave his eyes a rub, and thought he was dreaming, but no—there they were bodily, chewing and whammelling, and making faces; so no wonder that, in keeping in his laugh, he sprung a button from his waistcoat, and was like to drop down from his chair, through the floor, in an ecstasy of astonishment, seeing they were all growing sea-sick, and as pale as stucco-images.
Frightened out of his wits at last, that he would be the death of the whole council, and that more of them would poison themselves, he took up one of the cigars,—every one knows cigars now, for they are fashionable among the very sweeps,—which he lighted at the candle, and commenced puffing like a tobacco-pipe.
My uncle and the rest, if they were ill before, were worse now; so when they got to the open air, instead of growing better, they grew sicker and sicker, till they were waggling from side to side like ships in a storm; and, no kenning whether their heels or heads were uppermost, went spinning round about like peeries.
“A little spark may make muckle wark.” It is perfectly wonderful what great events spring out of trifles, or what seem to common eyes but trifles. I do not allude to the nine days’ deadly sickness, that was the legacy of every one that ate his cigar, but to the awful truth, that at the next election of councillors, my poor uncle Jamie was completely blackballed—a general spite having been taken to him in the townhall, on account of having led the magistracy wrong, by doing what he ought to have let alone, thereby making himself and the rest a topic of amusement to the world at large, for many and many a month.
Others, to be sure, it becomes me to mention, have another version of the story, and impute the cause of his having been turned out to the implacable wrath of old Bailie Bogie, whose best black coat, square in the tails, that he had worn only on the Sundays for nine years, was totally spoiled, on their way home in the dark from his lordship’s, by a tremendous blash that my unfortunate uncle happened, in the course of nature, to let flee in the frenzy of a deadly upthrowing.—The Life of Mansie Wauch, Tailor in Dalkeith.