She was manifestly engaged in asking a blessing on her daily meal, and was proceeding to enumerate, with the voice of thanksgiving, the many mercies with which, under God’s good providence, she and hers had been visited. After an extensive enumeration, she came at last to speak of that ample provision on which she was now imploring a blessing. In this part of her address she dwelt with peculiar cheerfulness, as well as earnestness of tone, on that goodness which had provided so bountifully for her, whilst many better deserving than she were worse circumstanced. The whole tenor of her prayer tended to impress the listener with the belief that Janet’s board, though spread in a humble hut, must be at least amply supplied with the necessaries of life. But what was Lord W——’s surprise, on entrance, to find that a round oaten bannock, toasting before a brick at a peat fire, with a basin of whey,—the gift of a kind neighbour,—composed that ample and bountiful provision for which this humble, but contented and pious woman expressed so much gratitude! Lord W—— was struck with the contrast between his own condition and feelings and those of this humble pair; and, in settling upon Janet and her inmate £6 a-year for life, he enabled her to accommodate herself with a new plaid and black silk hood, in which she appeared, with her granddaughter, every Sabbath, occupying her well-known and acknowledged position on the lowest step of the pulpit stair, and paying the same respect to the minister in passing as if she had been entirely dependent on her own industry and the good will of her neighbours as formerly.
THE UNLUCKY TOP BOOTS.
Chapter I.
Top Boots, as everybody must have remarked, are now [1833] nearly altogether out of fashion. Their race is all but extinct. An occasional pair may indeed still be seen encasing the brawny legs of a stout elderly country gentleman on a market day, or on the occasion of a flying visit to the metropolis; but with this exception, and with probably that of some hale obstinate bachelor octogenarian, who, in full recollection of the impression which his top boots had made on the public mind some fifty years since, still persists in thrusting his shrivelled shanks into the boots of his youth;—we say, with the first positive, and the last probable exception, this highly respectable-looking, and somewhat flashy, article of dress has entirely disappeared.
Time was, however, and we recollect it well, when matters stood far otherwise with top boots. We have a distinct vision of numberless pairs flitting before our eyes, through the mazes of the various thoroughfares of the city; but, alas! they have vanished, one after another, like stars before the light of approaching day. Rest to their soles—they are now gathered to their fathers—their brightness is extinguished—their glory is gone. The Conqueror of Waterloo hath conquered them also. The top boots have fallen before the Wellingtons!
We have said that we recollect when it was otherwise with top boots, and so we do. We recollect when a pair of top boots was a great object of ambition with the young, whose worldly prosperity was all yet to come—whose means of indulging in such little vanities of the flesh were yet to be acquired. To them a pair of top boots was a sort of land-mark in the voyage of life; a palpable, prominent, and desirable object to be attained; a sort of Cape Horn to be doubled. Nor were they less objects of ambition at the time we speak of—say about 40 years since—to the more advanced, whose circumstances required a long previous hint to prepare for such an event as the purchase of a pair of top boots. In short, top boots were the rage of the day. The apprentice, the moment he got “out” of his time, got “into” his top boots. The first thing the young grocer did was to get a pair of top boots. No lover then went to woo his mistress but in top boots, or at least if he did, the chance was, that he would go to very little purpose. The buckishly-inclined mechanic, too, hoarded his superfluous earnings until they reached the height of a pair of top boots, in which to entomb his lower limbs. Although their visits now, as we have already hinted, are “few and far between,” we have seen the day when, instead of being but occasionally seen, like solitary points of light as they are now, on the dusky street, they converted it by their numbers into an absolute via lactea,—a perfect galaxy of white leather,—or shot, frequent, pale, and flitting, like northern streamers, through the dark tide of humanity as it strolled along.
No marvel is it, therefore, that, in the midst of the wide prevalence of this top boot epidemic, poor Tommy Aikin should have fallen a victim to the disease—that his heart should have been set upon a pair of top boots; nor is it a marvel that Mr Aikin should have been able finally to gratify this longing of his, seeing that he was in tolerable circumstances, or at least in such circumstances as enabled him, by retrenching a little somewhere else, to attain the great object of his ambition—a pair of top boots. No marvel, then, as we have said, are these things which we have related of Mr Aikin; but great marvel is it that a pair of top boots should have wrought any man such mischief, as we shall presently show they did to that honest man. But let us not anticipate. Let us, as has been before wisely said, begin at the beginning, and say who Mr Aikin was, and what were the evils in which his top boots involved him.
Be it known, then, to all whom it may concern, that Mr Thomas Aikin was an officer of Excise, and was, at the period to which our story relates, residing in a certain small town not more than fifty miles distant from the city of Glasgow. Mr Aikin was a stout-made middle-aged man, exceedingly good-natured, kind, civil, and obliging. In short, he was an excellent fellow, honest and upright in all his dealings, and a faithful servant of the revenue. Everybody liked Mr Aikin, and Mr Aikin liked everybody; and sorely did everybody lament his misfortunes when they fell upon him. Mr Aikin had for many years led a happy life in the bosom of his family. He laughed and joked away, took his jug of toddy, caressed his children, spoke always affectionately to and of his wife, and was so spoken to and of by her in return. In short, Mr Aikin was a happy man up to that evil hour when he conceived the idea of possessing himself of a pair of top boots.
“Mary,” said Mr Aikin, one luckless evening, to his loving wife, after having sat for about half an hour looking into the fire.
“Aweel, Thomas?” said his spouse, in token of her attention.