Oh, love, love, lassie,
Love is like a dizziness,
It winna let a puir bodie
Gang about their business.

James Hogg.

The days of the years of my prenticeship having glided cannily over on the working-board of my respected maister, James Hosey, where I sat sewing cross-legged like a busy bee, in the true spirit of industrious contentment, I found myself, at the end of the seven year, so well instructed in the tailoring trade, to which I had paid a near-sighted attention, that, without more ado, I girt myself round about with a proud determination of at once cutting my mother’s apron string, and venturing to go without a hold. Thinks I to myself, “faint heart never won fair lady;” so, taking my stick in my hand, I set out towards Edinburgh, as brave as a Highlander, in search of a journeyman’s place. When I think how many have been out of bread, month after month, making vain application at the house of call, I may set it down to an especial Providence, that I found a place, on the very first day, to my heart’s content, in by at the Grassmarket, where I stayed for the space of six calendar months.

Had it not been from a real sense of the duty I owed to my future employers, whomsoever they might be, in making myself a first-rate hand in the cutting, shaping, and sewing line, I would not have found courage in my breast to have helped me out through such a long and dreary time. The change from our own town, where every face was friendly, and where I could ken every man I saw, by the cut of his coat, at half a mile’s distance, to the bum and bustle of the High Street, the tremendous cannons of the Castle, packed full of soldiers ready for war, and the filthy, ill-smelling abominations of the Cowgate, where I put up, was almost more than could be tholed by man of woman born. My lodging was up six pair of stairs, in a room of Widow Randie’s, which I rented for half-a-crown a-week, coals included; and many a time, after putting out my candle, before stepping into my bed, I used to look out at the window, where I could see thousands and thousands of lamps, spreading for miles adown streets and through squares, where I did not know a living soul; and dreeing the awful and insignificant sense of being a lonely stranger in a foreign land. Then would the memory of past days return to me; yet I had the same trust in Heaven as I had before, seeing that they were the dividual stars above my head which I used to glour up at in wonder at Dalkeith—pleasant Dalkeith! ay, how different, with its bonny river Esk, its gardens full of gooseberry bushes and pear-trees, its grass parks spotted with sheep, and its grand green woods, from the bullying blackguards, the comfortless reek, and the nasty gutters of the Netherbow.

To those, nevertheless, that take the world as they find it, there are pleasures in all situations; nor was mine, bad though I allow it to be, entirely destitute of them; for our work-room being at the top of the stairs, and the light of heaven coming down through skylights, three in number, we could, by putting out our heads, have a vizzy of the grand ancient building of George Heriot’s Hospital, with the crowds of young laddies playing through the grass parks, with their bit brown coaties, and shining leather caps, like a wheen puddocks; and all the sweet country out by Barrowmuirhead, and thereaway; together with the Corstorphine Hills—and the Braid Hills—and the Pentland Hills—and all the rest of the hills, covered here and there with tufts of blooming whins, as yellow as the beaten gold—spotted round about their bottoms with green trees, and growing corn, but with tops as bare as a gaberlunzie’s coat—kepping the rowling clouds on their awful shoulders on cold and misty days; and freckled over with the flowers of the purple heather, on which the shy moorfowl take a delight to fatten and fill their craps, through the cosey months of the blythe summer time.

Let nobody take it amiss, yet I must bear witness to the truth, though the devil should have me. My heart was sea-sick of Edinburgh folk and town manners, for the which I had no stomach. I could form no friendly acquaintanceship with a living soul; so I abode by myself, like St John in the Isle of Patmos, on spare allowance, making a sheep-head serve me for three days’ kitchen. I longed like a sailor that has been far at sea, and wasted and weatherbeaten, to see once more my native home; and, bundling up, flee from the noisy stramash to the loun dykeside of domestic privacy. Every thing around me seemed to smell of sin and pollution, like the garments of the Egyptians with the ten plagues; and often, after I took off my clothes to lie down in my bed, when the watchmen that guarded us through the night in blue dreadnoughts with red necks, and battons, and horn-bouets, from thieves, murderers, and pickpockets, were bawling, “Half-past ten o’clock,” did I commune with my own heart, and think within myself, that I would rather be a sober, poor, honest man in the country, able to clear my day and way by the help of Providence, than the Provost himself, my lord though he be, or even the Mayor of London, with his velvet gown trailing for yards in the glaur behind him—do what he likes to keep it up; or riding about the streets—as Joey Smith the Yorkshire jockey, to whom I made a hunting-cap, told me—in a coach made of clear crystal, and wheels of the beaten gold.

It was an awful business; dog on it, I ay wonder yet how I got through with it. There was no rest for soul or body, by night or day, with police-officers crying, “One o’clock, an’ a frosty morning,” knocking Eirishmen’s teeth down their throats with their battons, hauling limmers by the lug and horn into the lock-up-house, or over by to Bridewell, where they were set to beat hemp for a small wage, and got their heads shaved; with carters bawling, “Ye yo, yellow sand, yellow sand,” with mouths as wide as a barn-door, and voices that made the drums of your ears dirl, and ring again like mad; with fishwives from Newhaven, Cockenzie, and Fisherrow, skirling, “Roug-a-rug, warstling herring,” as if every one was trying to drown out her neighbour, till the very landladies, at the top of the seventeen story houses, could hear, if they liked to be fashed, and might come down at their leisure to buy them at three for a penny; men from Barnton, and thereaway on the Queensferry Road, halloing “Sour douk, sour douk;” tinklers skirmishing the edges of brown plates they were trying to make the old wives buy—and what not. To me it was a real hell upon earth.

Never let us repine, howsomever, but consider that all is ordered for the best. The sons of the patriarch Jacob found out their brother Joseph in a foreign land, and where they least expected it; so it was here—even here, where my heart was sickening unto death, from my daily and nightly thoughts being as bitter as gall—that I fell in with the greatest blessing of my life, Nanse Cromie!

In the flat below our workshop lived Mrs Whitteraick, the wife of Mr Whitteraick, a dealer in hens and hams in the poultry market, that had been fallen in with, when her gudeman was riding out on his bit sheltie in the Lauder direction, bargaining with the farmers for their ducks, chickens, gaislings, geese, turkey-pouts, howtowdies, guinea-hens, and other barn-door fowls; and, among his other calls, having happened to make a transaction with her father, anent some Anchovy-ducks, he, by a warm invitation, was kindly pressed to remain for the night.

The upshot of the business was, that, on mounting his pony to make the best of his way home, next morning after breakfast, Maister Whitteraick found he was shot through the heart with a stound of love; and that, unless a suitable remedy could be got, there was no hope for him on this side of time, let alone blowing out his brains, or standing before the minister. Right it was in him to run the risk of deciding on the last; and so well did he play his game, that, in two months from that date, after sending sundry presents on his part to the family, of smeaked hams and salt tongues—acknowledged on theirs, by return of carrier, in the shape of sucking pigs, jargonelle pears, skim-milk cheeses, and such like—matters were soldered; and Miss Jeanie Learig, made into Mrs Whitteraick by the blessing of Dr Blether, rode away into Edinburgh in a post-chaise, with a brown and a black horse, one blind, and the other lame, seated cheek-by-jowl with her loving spouse, who, doubtless, was busked out in his best, with a Manchester superfine blue coat, and double gilt buttons, a waterproof hat, silk stockings, with open-steek gushats, and bright yellow shamoy gloves.

A stranger among strangers, and not knowing how she might thole the company and conversation of town-life, Mrs Whitteraick that was to be, hired a bit wench of a lassie from the neighbourhood, that was to follow her, come the term. And who think ye should this lassie be, but Nanse Cromie—afterwards, in the course of a kind Providence, the honoured wife of my bosom, and the mother of bonny Benjie.

In going up and down the stairs—it being a common entry, ye observe—me maybe going down with my everyday hat on to my dinner, and she coming up, carrying a stoup of water, or half-a-pound of pouthered butter on a plate, with a piece paper thrown over it—we frequently met half-way, and had to stand still to let one another pass. Nothing came out of these fore-gatherings, howsomever, for a month or two, she being as shy and modest as she was bonny, with her clean demity short-gown, and snow-white morning mutch, to say nothing of her cherry mouth, and her glancing eyes; and me unco douffie in making up to strangers. We could not help, nevertheless, to take aye a stolen look of each other in passing; and I was a gone man, bewitched out of my seven senses, falling from my clothes, losing my stomach, and over the lugs in love, three weeks and some odd days before ever a single syllable passed between us.

Gude kens how long this Quaker-meeting-like silence would have continued, had we not chanced to foregather one gloaming; and I, having gotten a dram from one of our customers with a hump-back, at the Crosscausey, whose fashionable new coat I had been out fitting on, found myself as brave as a Bengal tiger, and said to her, “This is a fine day, I say, my dear Nancy.”

The ice being once broken, every thing went on as smoothly as ye like; so, in the long run, we went like lightning from two-handed cracks on the stair-head, to stown walks, after work-hours, out by the West Port, and thereaway.

If ever a man loved, and loved like mad, it was me, Mansie Wauch—and I take no shame in the confession; but, knowing it all in the course of nature, declare it openly and courageously in the face of the wide world. Let them laugh who like; honest folk, I pity them; such know not the pleasures of virtuous affection. It is not in corrupted, sinful hearts that the fire of true love can ever burn clear. Alas, and ohon orie! they lose the sweetest, completest, dearest, truest pleasure that this world has in store for its children. They know not the bliss to meet, that makes the embrace of separation bitter. They never dreamed the dreams that make wakening to the morning light unpleasant. They never felt the raptures that can dirl like darts through a man’s soul from a woman’s eye. They never tasted the honey that dwells on a woman’s lip, sweeter than yellow marygolds to the bee; or fretted under the fever of bliss that glows through the frame in pressing the hand of a suddenly met, and fluttering sweetheart. But tuts-tuts—hech-how! my day has long since passed; and this is stuff to drop from the lips of an auld fool. Nevertheless, forgive me, friends: I cannot help all-powerful nature.

Nanse’s taste being like my own, we amused one another in abusing great cities, which are all chokeful of the abominations of the Scarlet Woman; and it is curious how soon I learned to be up to trap—I mean in an honest way; for, when she said she was wearying the very heart out of her to be home again to Lauder, which she said was her native, and the true land of Goshen, I spoke back to her by way of answer—“Nancy, my dear, believe me that the real land of Goshen is out at Dalkeith; and if ye’ll take up with me, and enter into a way of doing, I daursay in a while ye’ll come to think so too.”

What will ye say there? Matters were by-and-bye settled full tosh between us; and, though the means of both parties were small, we were young, and able and willing to help one another. Nanse, out of her wages, had hained a trifle; and I had safe lodged under lock-and-key in the Bank of Scotland, against the time of my setting up, the siller which was got by selling the bit house of granfaither’s, on the death of my ever-to-be-lamented mother, who survived her helpmate only six months, leaving me an orphan lad in a wicked world, obliged to fend, forage, and look out for myself.

Taking matters into account, therefore, and considering that it is not good for man to be alone, Nanse and me laid our heads together towards the taking a bit house in the fore-street of Dalkeith; and at our leisure kept a look-out about buying the plenishing—the expense of which, for different littles and littles, amounted to more than we expected; yet, to our hearts’ content, we made some most famous second-hand bargains of sprechery, amongst the old-furniture warehousemen of the Cowgate. I might put down here the prices of the room-grate, the bachelor’s oven, the cheese-toaster, and the warming-pan especially, which, though it had a wheen holes in it, kept a fine polish; but, somehow or other, have lost the receipt, and cannot make true affidavy.

Certain it is, whatever cadgers may say to the contrary, that the back is aye made for the burden; and, were all to use the means, and be industrious, many, that wyte bad harvests, and worse times, would have, like the miller in the auld sang, “A penny in the purse for dinner and for supper,” or better to finish the verse, “Gin ye please a guid fat cheese, and lumps of yellow butter.”

For two three days, I must confess, after Maister Wiggie had gone through the ceremony of tying us together, and Nanse and me found ourselves in the comfortable situation of man and wife, I was a wee dowie and desponding, thinking that we were to have a numerous small family, and where trade was to come from; but no sooner was my sign nailed up, with, four iron hold-fasts, by Johnny Hammer, painted in black letters on a blue ground, with a picture of a jacket on one side, and a pair of shears on the other,—and my shop-door opened to the public, with a wheen ready-made waistcoats, gallowses, leather-caps and Kilmarnock cowls, hung up at the window, than business flowed in upon us in a perfect torrent. First one came in for his measure, and then another. A wife came in for a pair of red worsted boots for her bairn, but would not take them for they had not blue fringes. A bareheaded lassie, hoping to be handsel, threw down twopence, and asked tape at three yards for a halfpenny. The minister sent an old black coat beneath his maid’s arm, pinned up in a towl, to get docked in the tails down into a jacket; which I trust I did to his entire satisfaction, making it fit to a hair. The Duke’s butler himself patronized me, by sending me a coat which was all hair-powder and pomate, to get a new neck put to it. And James Batter, aye a staunch friend of the family, dispatched a barefoot cripple lassie down the close to me, with a brown paper parcel, tied with skinie, and having a memorandum letter sewed on the top of it, and wafered with a wafer. It ran as follows; “Maister Batter has sent down, per the bearer, with his compliments to Mr Wauch, a cuttikin of corduroy, deficient in the instep, which please let out, as required. Maister Wauch will also please be so good as observe, that three of the buttons have sprung the thorls, which he will be obliged to him to replace, at his earliest convenience. Please send me a message what that may be; and have the account made out, article for article, and duly discharged, that I may send down the bearer with the change; and to bring me back the cuttikin and the account, to save time and trouble. I am, dear sir, your most obedient friend, and ever most sincerely,

“James Batter.”

No wonder than we attracted customers, for our sign was the prettiest ye ever saw, though the jacket was not just so neatly painted, as for some sand-blind creatures not to take it for a goose. I daresay there were fifty half-naked bairns glowring their eyes out of their heads at it, from morning till night; and, after they all were gone to their beds, both Nanse and me found ourselves so proud of our new situation in life, that we slipped out in the dark by ourselves, and had a prime look at it with a lantern.