He was a native of ——, where the rents had lately been raised, by a new laird, far beyond the capabilities of the tacksmen. They had done their best to pay them—had struggled long, and hard, with an ungrateful soil—but their will and industry were lost; and they were, finally, borne down by hard times, and harsh measures. ’Twas hard to leave the hearths which generations of their forefathers had shadowed and hallowed—’twas yet harder to see their infants’ lips worrying the exhausted breast, and to watch the cheeks of their children as they grew pale from want—and to see their frolics tamed by hunger into inert stupidity. An American trader had just touched at their island, for the purpose of receiving emigrants, and half its inhabitants had domiciled themselves on board, before her arrival had been known twelve hours. Our poor Scot would fain have joined them, with his family and parents, but he lacked the means to provide even the scanty store of oatmeal and butter which they were required to ship before they could be allowed to step on deck; so, in a fit of distress and despair, he left the home that had never been a day out of his sight, and enlisted with a party of his regiment, then at ——, for the sole purpose of sending to the afflicted tenants of his “bit housey,” the poor pittance of bounty he received, to be a short stay ’twixt them and starvation.
He had been last at St. John’s, Newfoundland; “and there,” said he, indignantly, “they mun mak’ a cook’s orderly o’ me, as gin a war’ nae as proper a man as ony o’ them to carry a musket; an’ they sint me to du a’ the odd jobes o’ a chap that did a wife’s-wark, tho’ there were a gude fivety young chaps i’ the regiment that had liked it wul aneugh, and were better fetting for the like o’ sican a place than mysel.—And so, sir,” he continued, “thar a was, working mysel intill a scalding heat, and than a’d geng out to carry in the cauld water; an’ i’ the deeing o’t, a got a cauld that sattled inwardly, an’ garr’d me hae a fivre an’ spit blood. Weel, sir, aifter mony months, a gote better; but oh! a was unco weak, and but a puir creature frae a strong man afore it: but a did na mak muckle o’t, for a thought ay, gin ony thing cam o’t to disable me, or so, that a should hae goten feve-pence or sax-pence a-day an’ that had been a great help.”
——Oh! if the rich would but take the trouble to learn how many happy hearts they might make at small expense—and fashion their deeds to their knowledge—how many prayers might nightly ascend with their names from grateful bosoms to the recording angel’s ears—and how much better would the credit side of their account with eternity appear on that day, when the great balance must be struck!——
There was a pause—for my narrator’s breath failed him; and I took the opportunity of surveying him. He was about thirty, with a half hale, half hectic cheek; a strong red beard, of some three days’ growth, and a thick crop of light hair, such as only Scotchmen have—one of the Cain’s brands of our northern brethren—it curled firmly round his forehead; and his head was set upon his broad shoulders with that pillar of neck which Adrian in particular, and many other of the Roman emperors, are represented with, on their coins, but which is rarely seen at present. He must, when in full health, have stood about five feet seven; but, now, he lost somewhat of his height in a stoop, contracted during his illness, about the chest and shoulders, and common to most people affected with pulmonary complaints: his frame was bulky, but the sinews seemed to have lost their tension; and he looked like “one of might,” who had grappled strongly with an evil one in sore sickness. He bore no air of discontent, hard as his lot was; yet there was nothing theatrical in his resignation. All Scotchmen are predestinarians, and he fancied he saw the immediate hand of Providence working out his destiny through his misfortunes, and against such interference he thought it vain to clamour. Far other were my feelings when I looked on his fresh, broad face, and manly features, his open brow, his width of shoulders, and depth of chest, and heard how the breath laboured in that chest for inefficient vent——
“May be,” said he—catching my eye in its wanderings, as he raised his own from the ground,—“May be a’d be better, gin a were doon i’ wun nain place.” I was vext to my soul that my look had spoken so plainly as to elicit this remark. Tell a man in a consumption that he looks charmingly, and you have opened the sluices of his heart almost as effectually, to your ingress, as if you had really cured him. And yet I think this poor fellow said what he did, rather to please one which he saw took an interest in him, than to flatter himself into a belief of recovery, or from any such existing belief; for, shortly after, when I asked him what he would do in Scotland, “A dunna ken wat a mun du,” he replied; “a canna du ony labouring wark, an’ a ha na goten ony trade; but, ye see, sir, we like ay to die whar’ wer’re born; and my faither, an’ my gran’faither afore him forbye, a’ my ither kin, an’ the mither that bore me, there a’ i’ the nook o’ —— kirk-yaird; an’ than my wife an twa bairnies:”—There was a pause in the soldier’s voice; he had not learnt the drama of mendicity or sentimentality, but, by ——! there was a tear in his eye.[78]—I hate a scene as much as Byron did, but I admire a feeling heart, and pity a sorrowful one——the tear did not fall. I looked in his face when I heard his voice again; his eye glistened, and the lash was wet, but the tear was gone—And there stood I, whose slender body scarcely comprehended one half of the circumference of his muscular frame.—“And the hand of Death is here!” said I; and then I turned my eyes upon myself, and almost wondered how my soul dwelt in so frail a tenement, while his was about to escape from such a seeming fastness of flesh.
After some further conversation, he told me his regiment had at one time been ordered off for Africa against the Ashantees; and sure never mortal man regretted counter orders on such grounds as he did those which balked his expectations of a visit to Sierra Leone.—“A thought,” said he, “wur regiment woud ha gien to Aifrica against the Aishantees—an a was in hopes it wud—it’s a didly climate, an’ there was nae money goten out o’ the laist fray; but thin—perhaps its jist as well to die in ae place as anither—but than we canna bring wursels to feel it, tho’ we may think it—an’ than ye see, sir, as a sid afore, a hae twa bairnies, an gin a’d laid doon wi’ the rast, the mither o’ them might hae goten the widow’s pension for them an’ hirsel.”—The widow’s pension! sixpence a-day for a woman and two children—and death to the fourth person as the only price of it! Hear this, shade of Lemprière! Manlius and the Horatii died to save a country, and to purchase earthly immortality by their deaths—but here’s a poor fellow willing to give up the ghost, by sword, plague, pestilence or famine, to secure a wife and two children two-pence each, per day!
Look to it, ye three-bottle beasts, or men—as the courtesy of a cringing world calls you—look to it, when ye toast the next lordly victor “with three times three!”—Shout ’till the roof rings, and then think, amid the din of your compeers, of the humble dead—of those who walk silently in the path of the grave, and of the widowed and fatherless. Commanders die for glory, for a funeral procession, or a title, or wealth for those they leave behind; but who speaks of the private, who dies with a wound for every pore?—he rots on the earth; or, with some scores or hundreds of his comrades, a few inches beneath it; and his wife gets—“sixpence a day!”
Poor fellow, thought I, as I looked on my narrator—were I a king—but kings cannot scrape acquaintance with every man in the ranks of their forces—but had I been your officer, I think you should not have wanted your pension for the few days that are to shine on you in this world; and, had you fallen, it should have gone hard with me, but your wife and two children should have had their twopence each per day—and, were I a man of fortune, I would be proud to keep the life in such a heart, as long as God would permit—and so saying, or thinking—and blinking away the dimness of humanity from my eye—I thrust my hand into my pocket, and gave him Sixpence.—Reader! smile not; I am but a poor harum scarum headed mortal—’t was all I had, “in possession, expectancy, remainder, or reversion”—
J. J. K.