Just at this moment, in comes wee Geordie, greeting for his parritch. He kent naething of what had taken place in the house; and, doubtless, expeckit to mak an idiot of me, his faither, as he had been accustomed to do, almost frae his very cradle. I saw that now was the time to thresh the corruption out of him; and brandishing the taws ower my head, I made a stap forrit to lay hand upon him, and treat him like the lave. He looked as if he had an inkling of what was forthcoming, and ran whinging and craiking to his mither, who stood wiping her een wi’ her striped apron in a corner of the room. The terrified laddie clang to her knees, but she never offered to lend a helping hand, sae great was the salutary terror wi’ which I had inspired her. So I pu’d him awa frae her coats, to which he was clinging; and, laying him ower my knee, I gied him hipsie-dipsie in the presence of his mither, his sister, and Andrew Brand, who were looking on.
And thus hae I, who for eighteen years was ruled by my wife, got the upper hand; and ony man who is henpeckit as I hae been, should just tak the same plan, and his success will be as sure as mine. Andrew Brand aye said to me that a man should wear his ain breeks; and I can maintain, frae present experience, that a wiser saying is no to be found in the Proverbs of Solomon, the son of David. No that Maggie hasna tried nows and thans to recover her lost power, but I hae on thae occasions conduckit mysel wi’ sic firmness, that she has at last gien it up as a bad job, and is now as obedient a wife as ye’ll meet wi’ between this and Bothwell. The twa bairns, too, are just wonderfully changed, and are as raisonable as can be expeckit, a’ things considered. Let men, therefore, whether gentle or simple, follow my plan, and the word “henpeckit,” as Andrew Brand says, will soon slip out of the dictionair.
MY SISTER KATE.
By Andrew Picken.
There is a low road (but it is not much frequented, for it is terribly round about) that passes at the foot of the range of hills that skirt the long and beautiful gut or firth of the Clyde, in the west of Scotland; and as you go along this road, either up or down, the sea or firth is almost at your very side, the hills rising above you; and you are just opposite to the great black and blue mountains on the other side of the gut, that sweep in heavy masses, or jut out in bold capes, at the mouth of the deep lochs that run up the firth into the picturesque highlands of Argyleshire.
You may think of the scene what you please, because steam-boating has, of late years, profaned it somewhat into commonness, and defiled its pure air with filthy puffs of coal smoke; and because the Comet and all her unfortunate passengers were sunk to the bottom of this very part of the firth; and because, a little time previous, a whole boatful of poor Highland reaper girls were all run down in the night-time, while they were asleep, and drowned near the Clough lighthouse hard by; but if you were to walk this road by the seaside any summer afternoon, going towards the bathing village of Gourock, you would say, as you looked across to the Highlands, and up the Clyde towards the rocks of Dumbarton Castle, that there are few scenes more truly magnificent and interesting.
There is a little village exactly opposite to you, looking across the firth, which is called Dunoon, and contains the burying-place of the great house of Argyle; and which, surrounded by a patch of green cultivated land, sloping pleasantly from the sea, and cowering snugly by itself, with its picturesque cemetery, under the great blue hills frowning behind, looks, from across the firth, absolutely like a tasteful little haunt of the capricious spirit of romance.
Well, between this road on the lowland side of the firth, and the water’s-edge, and before it winds off round by the romantic seat of Sir Michael Shaw Stewart, farther up, there stand, or stood, two or three small fishing cottages which, from the hills nearly over them, looked just like white shells, of a large size, dropped fancifully down upon the green common between the hills and the road. In these cottages, it was observed, the fishermen had numerous families, who, while young, assisted them in their healthful employment; and that the girls, of which there were a number, were so wild in their contented seclusion, that if any passenger on the road stopped to observe them, as they sat in groups on the green mending their father’s nets, they would take alarm, and rise and run off like fawns, and hide among the rocks by the sea, or trip back into the cottages. Now it happened, once on a time, that a great event took place to one of the cottager’s daughters, which, for a long period, deranged and almost destroyed the happy equality in which they had hitherto lived; and becoming the theme of discourse and inquiry concerning things beyond the sphere of the fisher people and all their neighbours as far as Gourock, introduced among them no small degree of ambition and discontent.
There was one of the fishermen, a remarkably decent, well disposed Highlandman, from the opposite shore of Argyleshire, named Martin M‘Leod, and he had two daughters, the youngest of which, as was no uncommon case, turned out to be remarkably and even delicately beautiful.
But nobody ever saw or thought anything about the beauty of Catherine M‘Leod, except it might be some of the growing young men in the neighbouring cottages, several of whom began, at times, to look at her with a sort of wonder, and seemed to feel a degree of awe in her company; while her family took an involuntary pride in her beyond all the others; and her eldest sister somehow imitated her in every thing, and continually quoted her talk, and trumpeted about among the neighbours what was said and done by “my sister Kate.”