In the sweet shire of Cardigan,
Not far from pleasant Ivor-hall,
An old man dwells, a little man;
I’ve heard he once was tall.
A long blue livery coat has he,
That’s fair behind and fair before;
Yet, meet him where you will, you see
At once that he is poor.

Wordsworth.

It was a clear starry night, in the blasty month of January, I mind it well. The snow had fallen during the afternoon; or, as Benjie came in crying, that “the auld wives o’ the norlan sky were plucking their geese;” and it continued dim and dowie till towards the gloaming, when, as the road-side labourers were dandering home from their work, some with pickaxes and others with shools, and just as our cocks and hens were going into their beds, poor things, the lift cleared up to a sharp freeze, and the well-ordered stars came forth glowing over the blue sky. Between six and seven the moon rose; and I could not get my two prentices in from the door, where they were bickering one another with snow-balls, or maybe carhailling the folk on the street in their idle wantonness; so I was obliged for that night to disappoint Edie Macfarlane of the pair of black spatterdashes he was so anxious to get finished, for dancing in next day, at Souple Jack the carpenter’s grand penny-wedding.

Seeing that little more good was to be expected till morning, I came to the resolution of shutting-in half-an-hour earlier than usual; so, as I was carrying out the shop-shutters, with my hat over my cowl, for it was desperately sharp, I mostly in my hurry knocked down an old man, that was coming up to ask me, “if I was Maister Wauch the tailor and furnisher.”

Having told him that I was myself, instead of a better; and having asked him to step in, that I might have a glimpse of his face at the candle, I saw that he was a stranger, dressed in a droll auld-farrant green livery-coat, faced with white. His waistcoat was cut in the Parly-voo fashion, with long lappels, and a double row of buttons down the breast; and round his neck he had a black corded stock, such like, but not so broad, as I afterwards wore in the volunteers, when drilling under Big Sam. He had a well-worn scraper on his head, peaked before and behind, with a bit crape knotted round it, which he politely took off, making a low bow; and requesting me to bargain with him for a few articles of grand second-hand apparel, which once belonged to his master that was deceased, and which was now carried by himself, in a bundle under his left oxter.

Happening never to make a trade of dealing in this line, and not very sure like as to how the old man might have come by the bundle in these riotous and knock-him-down times, I swithered a moment, giving my chin a rub, before answering; and then advised him to take a step in at his leisure to St Mary’s Wynd, where he would meet in with merchants in scores. But no; he seemed determined to strike a bargain with me; and I heard from the man’s sponsible and feasible manner of speech—for he was an old weatherbeaten-looking body of a creature, with gleg een, a cock nose, white locks, and a tye behind—that the clothes must have been left him, as a kind of friendly keepsake, by his master, now beneath the mools. Thinking by this, that if I got them at a wanworth, I might boldly venture, I condescended to his loosing down the bundle, which was in a blue silk napkin with yellow flowers. As he was doing this, he told me that he was on his way home from the north to his own country, which lay among the green Welsh hills, far away; and that he could not carry much luggage with him, as he was obliged to travel with his baggage tied up in a bundle, on the end of his walking-staff, over his right shoulder.

Pity me! what a grand coat it was! I thought at first it must have been worn on the King’s own back, honest man; for it was made of green velvet, and embroidered all round about—back seams, side seams, flaps, lappels, button-holes, nape and cuffs, with gold lace and spangles, in a manner to have dazzled the understanding of any Jew with a beard shorter than his arm. So, no wonder that it imposed on the like of me; and I was mostly ashamed to make him an offer for it of a crown-piece and a dram. The waistcoat, which was of white satin, single-breasted, and done up with silver tinsel in a most beautiful manner, I also bought from him for a couple of shillings, and four hanks of black thread. Though I would on no account or consideration give him a bode for the Hessian boots, which having cuddy-heels and long silk tossels, were by far and away over grand for the like of a tailor, such as me, and fit for the Sunday’s wear of some fashionable Don of the first water. However, not to part uncivilly, and be as good as my word, I brought ben Nanse’s bottle, and gave him a cawker at the shop counter; and, after taking a thimbleful to myself, to drink a good journey to him, I bade him take care of his feet, as the causeway was frozen, and saw the auld flunkie safely over the strand with a candle.

Ye may easily conceive that Nanse got a surprise, when I paraded ben to the room with the grand coat and waistcoat on, cocking up my head, putting my hands into the haunch pockets, and strutting about more like a peacock than a douce elder of Maister Wiggie’s kirk; so just as, thinking shame of myself, I was about to throw it off, I found something bulky at the bottom of the side pocket, which I discovered to be a wheen papers fastened together with green tape. Finding they were written in a real neat hand, I put on my spectacles, and sending up the close for James Batter, we sat round the fireside, and read away like nine-year-aulds.

The next matter of consideration was, whether, in buying the coat as it stood, the paper belonged to me, or the old flunkie waiting-servant with the peaked hat. James and me, after an hour and a half’s argle-bargleing pro and con, in the way of Parliament-house lawyers, came at last to be unanimously of opinion, that according to the auld Scotch proverb of

“He that finds keeps,
And he that loses seeks,”

whatever was part or pendicle of the coat at the time of purchase, when it hung exposed for sale over the white-headed Welshman’s little finger, became, according to the law of nature and nations, as James Batter wisely observed, part and pendicle of the property of me, Mansie Wauch, the legal purchaser.

Notwithstanding all this, however, I was not sincerely convinced in my own conscience; and I daresay if the creature had cast up, and come seeking them back, I would have found myself bound to make restitution. This is not now likely to happen; for twenty long years have come and passed away, like the sunshine of yesterday, and neither word nor wittens of the body have been seen or heard tell of; so, according to the course of nature, being a white-headed old man, with a pigtail, when the bargain was made, his dust and bones have, in all likelihood, long ago mouldered down beneath the green turf of his own mountains, like his granfather’s before him. This being the case, I daresay it is the reader’s opinion as well as my own, that I am quite at liberty to make what use of them I like. Concerning the poem things that came first in hand, I do not pretend to be any judge; but James thinks he could scarcely write any muckle better himself: so here goes; but I cannot tell you to what tune:

SONG.

I.

They say that other eyes are bright,
I see no eyes like thine;
So full of Heaven’s serenest light,
Like midnight stars they shine.

II.

They say that other cheeks are fair—
But fairer cannot glow
The rosebud in the morning air,
Or blood on mountain snow.

III.

Thy voice—Oh sweet it streams to me,
And charms my raptured breast;
Like music on the moonlight sea,
When waves are lull’d to rest.

IV.

The wealth of worlds were vain to give
Thy sinless heart to buy;
Oh I will bless thee while I live,
And love thee till I die!

From this song it appears a matter beyond doubt—for I know human nature—that the flunkie’s master had, in his earlier years, been deeply in love with some beautiful young lady, that loved him again, and that maybe, with a bounding and bursting heart, durst not let her affection be shown, from dread of her cruel relations, who insisted on her marrying some lord or baronet that she did not care one button about. If so, unhappy pair, I pity them! Were we to guess our way in the dark a wee farther, I think it not altogether unlikely, that he must have fallen in with his sweetheart abroad, when wandering about on his travels; for what follows seems to come as it were from her, lamenting his being called to leave her forlorn, and return home. This is all merely supposition on my part, and in the antiquarian style, whereby much is made out of little; but both me and James Batter are determined to be unanimously of this opinion, until otherwise convinced to the contrary. Love is a fiery and fierce passion everywhere; but I am told that we, who live in a more favoured land, know very little of the terrible effects it sometimes causes, and the bloody tragedies, which it has a thousand times produced, where the heart of man is uncontrolled by reason or religion, and his blood heated into a raging fever, by the burning sun that glows in the heaven above his head.

Here follows the poem of Taffy’s master’s foreign sweetheart; which, considering it to be a woman’s handiwork, is, I daresay, not that far amiss.

SONG OF THE SOUTH.

I.

Of all the garden flowers
The fairest is the rose;
Of winds that stir the bowers,
Oh! there is none that blows
Like the south—the gentle south—
For that balmy breeze is ours.

II.

Cold is the frozen north;
In its stern and savage mood,
’Mid gales, come drifting forth
Bleak snows and drenching flood:
But the south—the gentle south—
Thaws to love the willing blood.

III.

Bethink thee of the vales,
With their birds and blossoms fair—
Of the darkling nightingales,
That charm the starry air
In the south—the gentle south,—
Ah! our own dear home is there.

IV.

Where doth Beauty brightest glow,
With each rich and radiant charm,
Eye of light, and brow of snow,
Cherry lip, and bosom warm;
In the south—the gentle south—
There she waits, and works her harm

V.

Say, shines the Star of Love,
From the clear and cloudless sky,
The shadowy groves above,
Where the nestling ringdoves lie?
From the south—the gentle south—
Gleams its lone and lucid eye.

VI.

Then turn ye to the home
Of your brethren and your bride;
Far astray your steps may roam,
But more joys for thee abide,
In the south—our gentle south—
Than in all the world beside.

After reading a lot of the unknown gentleman’s compositions in prose and verse, something like his private history, James Batter informs me, can be made out, provided we are allowed to eke a little here and there. That he was an Englisher we both think amounts to a probability; and, from having an old “Taffy was a Welshman” for a flunkie, it would not be out of the order of nature to jealouse, that he may have resided somewhere among the hills, where he had picked him up and taken him into his kitchen, promoting him thereafter, for sobriety and good conduct, to be his body servant, and gentleman’s gentleman. Where he was born, however, is a matter of doubt, and also who were his folks; but of a surety, he was either born with a silver spoon in his mouth, or rose from the ranks like many another great man. That, however, is a matter of moonshine; we are all descended in a direct line from Adam. Where he was educated does not appear; but there can scarcely be a shadow of doubt, that he was for a considerable while at some school or other, where he had a number of cronies. In proof of this, and to show that we have good reasons for our suppositions, James recommends me to print the following rigmarole meditations, on the top of which is written in half-text,

SCHOOL RECOLLECTIONS.

“—They who in the vale of years advance,
And the dark eve is closing on their way,
When on the mind the recollections glance
Of early joy, and Hope’s delightful day,
Behold, in brighter hues than those of truth,
The light of morning on the fields of youth.”

Southey.

The morning being clear and fine, full of Milton’s “vernal delight and joy,” I determined on a saunter; the inclemency of the weather having, for more than a week, kept me a prisoner at home. Although now advanced into the heart of February, a great fall of snow had taken place; the roads were blocked up; the mails obstructed; and, while the merchant grumbled audibly for his letters, the politician, no less chagrined, conned over and over again his dingy rumpled old newspaper, compelled “to eat the leek of his disappointment.” The wind, which had blown inveterately steady from the surly north-east, had veered, however, during the preceding night, to the west; and, as it were by the spell of an enchanter, an instant thaw commenced. In the low grounds the snow gleamed forth in patches of a pearly whiteness; but, on the banks of southern exposure, the green grass and the black trodden pathway again showed themselves. The vicissitudes of twenty-four hours were indeed wonderful. Instead of the sharp frost, the pattering hail, and the congealed streams, we had the blue sky, the vernal zephyr, and the genial sunshine; the stream murmuring with a broader wave, as if making up for the season spent in the fetters of congelation; and that luxurious flow of the spirits, which irresistibly comes over the heart, at the re-assertion of Nature’s suspended vigour.

As I passed on under the budding trees, how delightful it was to hear the lark and the linnet again at their cheerful songs, to be aware that now “the winter was over and gone;” and to feel that the prospect of summer, with its lengthening days, and its rich variety of fruits and flowers, lay fully before us. There is something within us that connects the spring of the year with the childhood of our existence, and it is more especially at that season, that the thrilling remembrances of long departed pleasures are apt to steal into the thoughts; the re-awakening of nature calling us, by a fearful contrast, to the contemplation of joys that never can return, while all the time the heart is rendered more susceptible by the beauteous renovation in the aspect of the external world.

This sensation pressed strongly on my mind, as I chanced to be passing the door of the village school, momentarily opened for the admission of one, creeping along somewhat tardily with satchel on back, and “shining morning face.” What a sudden burst of sound was emitted—what harmonious discord—what a commixture of all the tones in the vocal gamut, from the shrill treble to the deep under-hum! A chord was touched which vibrated in unison; boyish days and school recollections crowded upon me; pleasures long vanished; feelings long stifled; and friendships—aye, everlasting friendships—cut asunder by the sharp stroke of death!

A public school is a petty world within itself—a wheel within a wheel—in so far as it is entirely occupied with its own concerns, affords its peculiar catalogue of virtues and vices, its own cares, pleasures, regrets, anticipations, and disappointments—in fact, a Lilliputian fac-simile of the great one. By grown men, nothing is more common than the assertion that childhood is a perfect Elysium; but it is a false supposition that school-days are those of unalloyed carelessness and enjoyment. It seems to be a great deal too much overlooked, that “little things are great to little men;” and perhaps the mind of boyhood is more active in its conceptions—more alive to the impulses of pleasure and pain—in other words, has a more extended scope of sensations, than during any other portion of our existence. Its days are not those of lack-occupation; they are full of stir, animation, and activity, for it is then we are in training for after life; and, when the hours of school restraint glide slowly over, “like wounded snakes,” the clock, that chimes to liberty, sends forth the blood with a livelier flow; and pleasure thus derives a double zest from the bridle that duty has imposed, joy being generally measured according to the difficulty of its attainment. What delight in life have we ever experienced more exquisite than that, which flowed at once in upon us from the teacher’s “bene, bene,” our own self-approbation, and release from the tasks of the day?—the green fields around us wherein to ramble, the stream beside us wherein to angle, the world of games and pastimes “before us where to choose.” Words are inadequate to express the thrill of transport, with which, on the rush from the school-house door, the hat is waved in air, and the shout sent forth!

Then what a variety of amusements succeed each other. Every mouth has its favourite ones. The sportsman does not more keenly scrutinize his kalendar for the commencement of the trouting, grouse-shooting, or hare-hunting season, than the younker for the time of flying kites, bowling at cricket, football, spinning peg-tops, and playing at marbles. Pleasure is the focus, which it is the common aim to approximate; and the mass is guided by a sort of unpremeditated social compact, which draws them out of doors as soon as meals are discussed, with a sincere thirst of amusement, as certainly as rooks congregate in spring to discuss the propriety of building nests, or swallows in autumn to deliberate in conclave on the expediency of emigration.

Then how perfectly glorious was the anticipation of a holiday—a long summer day of liberty and ease! In anticipation it was a thing boundless and endless, a foretaste of Elysium. It extended from the prima luce, from the earliest dawn of radiance that streaked the “severing clouds in yonder east,” through the sun’s matin, meridian, postmeridian, and vesper circuit; from the disappearance of Lucifer in the re-illumined skies, to his evening entrÉe in the character of Hesperus. Complain not of the brevity of life; ’tis men that are idle; a thousand things could be contrived and accomplished in that space, and a thousand schemes were devised by us, when boys, to prevent any portion of it passing over without improvement. We pursued the fleet angel of time through all his movements till he blessed us.

With these and similar thoughts in my mind, I strayed down to the banks of the river, and came upon the very spot, which, in those long-vanished years, had been a favourite scene of our boyish sports. The impression was overpowering; and as I gazed silently around me, my mind was subdued to that tone of feeling which Ossian so finely designates “the joy of grief.” The trees were the same, but older, like myself; seemingly unscathed by the strife of years—and herein was a difference. Some of the very bushes I recognised as our old lurking-places at “hunt the hare;” and, on the old fantastic beech-tree, I discovered the very bough from which we were accustomed to suspend our swings. What alterations—what sad havoc had time, circumstances, the hand of fortune, and the stroke of death, made among us since then! How were the thoughts of the heart, the hopes, the pursuits, the feelings changed; and, in almost every instance, it is to be feared, for the worse! As I gazed around me, and paused, I could not help reciting aloud to myself the lines of Charles Lamb, so touching in their simple beauty.

“I have had playmates, I have had companions,
In my days of childhood, in my joyful school-days;
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.
Some they have died, and some they have left me,
And some are taken from me, all are departed;
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.”

The fresh green plat, by the brink of the stream, lay before me. It was there that we played at leap-frog, or gathered dandelions for our tame rabbits; and, at its western extremity, were still extant the reliques of the deal-seat, at which we used to assemble on autumn evenings to have our round of stories. Many a witching tale and wondrous tradition hath there been told; many a marvel of “figures that visited the glimpses of the moon;” many a recital of heroic and chivalrous enterprise, accomplished ere warriors dwindled away to the mere puny-strength of mortals. Sapped by the wind and rain, the planks lay in a sorely decayed and rotten state, looking in their mossiness like a sign-post of desolation, a memento of terrestrial instability. Traces of the knife were still here and there visible upon the trunks of the supporting trees; and with little difficulty I could decipher some well-remembered initials.

“Cold were the hands that carved them there.”

It is, no doubt, wonderful that the human mind can retain such a mass of recollections; yet we seem to be, in general, little aware that for one solitary incident in our lives, preserved by memory, hundreds have been buried in the silent charnel-house of oblivion. We peruse the past, like a map of pleasing or melancholy recollections, and observe lines crossing and re-crossing each other in a thousand directions; some spots are almost blank; others faintly traced; and the rest a confused and perplexed labyrinth. A thousand feelings that, in their day and hour, agitated our bosoms, are now forgotten; a thousand hopes, and joys, and apprehensions, and fears, are vanished without a trace. Schemes, which cost us much care in their formation, and much anxiety in their fulfilment, have glided, like the clouds of yesterday, from our remembrance. Many a sharer of our early friendships, and of our boyish sports, we think of no more; they are as if they had never been, till perhaps some accidental occurrence, some words in conversation, some object by the wayside, or some passenger in the street, attract our notice—and then, as if awaking from a perplexing trance, a light darts in upon our darkness; and we discover that thus some one long ago spoke; that there something long ago happened; or that the person, who just passed us like a vision, shared smiles with us long, long years ago, and added a double zest to the enjoyments of our childhood.

Of our old class-fellows, of those whose days were of “a mingled yarn” with ours, whose hearts blended in the warmest reciprocities of friendship, whose joys, whose cares, almost whose wishes were in common, how little do we know? how little will even the severest scrutiny enable us to discover? Yet, at one time, we were inseparable “like Juno’s swans;” we were as brothers, nor dreamt we of ought else, in the susceptibility of our youthful imagination, than that we were to pass through all the future scenes of life, side by side; and, mutually supporting and supported, lengthen out the endearments, the ties, and the feelings of boyhood unto the extremities of existence. What a fine but a fond dream—alas, how wide of the cruel reality! The casual relation of a traveller may discover to us where one of them resided or resides. The page of an obituary may accidentally inform us how long one of them lingered on the bed of sickness, and by what death he died. Some we may perhaps discover in elevated situations, from which worldly pride might probably prevent their stooping down to recognise us. Others, immersed in the labyrinths of business, have forgot all, in the selfish pursuits of earthly accumulation. While the rest, the children of misfortune and disappointment, we may occasionally find out amid the great multitude of the streets, to whom life is but a desert of sorrow, and against whom prosperity seems to have shut for ever her golden gates.

Such are the diversities of condition, the varieties of fortune to which man is exposed, while climbing the hill of probationary difficulty. And how sublimely applicable are the words of Job, expatiating on the uncertainty of human existence: “Man dieth and wasteth away; yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he? As the waters fail from the sea, and the flood decayeth and drieth up; so man lieth down and riseth not till the heavens be no more.”

While standing on the same spot, where of yore the boyish multitude congregated in pursuit of their eager sports, a silent awe steals over the bosom, and the heart desponds at the thought, that all these once smiling faces are scattered now! Some, mayhap, tossing on the waste and perilous seas; some the merchants of distant lands; some fighting the battles of their country; others dead—inhabitants of the dark and narrow house, and hearing no more the billows of life, that thunder and break above their low and lonely dwelling-place!

* * * * *

Nanse, who was sitting by the table, knitting a pair of light-blue worsted stockings for Benjie, and myself, who was sewing on the buttons of a velveteen jacket for a country lad, were, I must say, not a little delighted, not only with the way in which the Welshman’s late master had spoken of his school-fellows, but with the manner in which James Batter, with his specs on, had read it over to us. Upon my word—and that of an elder—I do not believe that even Mr Wiggie himself could have done the thing greater justice. It was just as if he had been a play-actor man, spouting Douglas’s tragedy.

Having folded up that paper, and turned over not a few others, the docketings of which he read out to us, James at last says, “Ou ay, here it is. I think I can now prove to ye, that the gentleman’s sweetheart died abroad; and that, likely from her name—for it is here mentioned—she must have been a PortugÉe or Spaniard.”

“Ay, let us hear it,” cried Nanse. “Do, like a man, let us hear it, James; for I delight above a’ things to hear about love-stories. Do ye mind, Maister,” she said, “when ye was so deep in love aince yoursell?”

“Foolish woman,” I said, giving her a kind of severe look; “is that all your manners to interrupt Mr Batter? If ye’ll just keep a calm sough, ye’ll hear the long and the short o’t, in good time.”

By this, James, who did not relish interruption, and was a thought fidgety in his natural temper, had laid down the paper on the table, snuffed the candle, and raised his spectacles on his brow. But I said to him, “Excuse freedoms, James, and be so good as resume your discourse.” Then wishing to smooth him down, I added, by way of compliment—“Do go on; for you really are a prime reader. Nature surely intended ye for a minister.”

“Dinna flatter me,” said James; looking, however, rather proudishly at what I had said, and replacing his glasses on the brig of his nose, he then read us a screed of metre to the following effect; part of which, I am free to confess, is rather above my comprehension. But, never mind.

ELEGIAC STANZAS.

I.

’Tis midnight deep; the full round moon,
As ’twere a spectre, walks the sky;
The balmy breath of gentlest June
Just stirs the stream that murmurs by;
Above me frowns the solemn wood;
Nature, methinks, seems Solitude
Embodied to the eye.

II.

Yes, ’tis a season and a scene,
Inez, to think on thee; the day,
With stir and strife, may come between
Affection and thy beauty’s ray,
But feeling here assumes control,
And mourns my desolated soul
That thou are rapt away!

III.

Thou wert a rainbow to my sight,
The storms of life before thee fled;
The glory and the guiding light,
That onward cheer’d and upward led;
From boyhood to this very hour,
For me, and only me, thy flower
Its fragrance seem’d to shed.

IV.

Dark though the world for me might show
Its sordid faith and selfish gloom,
Yet ’mid life’s wilderness to know
For me that sweet flower shed its bloom,
Was joy, was solace:—thou art gone—
And hope forsook me, when the stone
Sank darkly o’er thy tomb.

V.

And art thou dead? I dare not think
That thus the solemn truth can be;
And broken is the only link
That chain’d youth’s pleasant thoughts to me!
Alas! that thou couldst know decay,
That, sighing, I should live to say
‘The cold grave holdeth thee!’

VI.

For me thou shon’st, as shines a star,
Lonely, in clouds when Heaven is lost;
Thou wert my guiding light afar,
When on misfortune’s billows tost:
Now darkness hath obscured that light,
And I am left in rayless night,
On Sorrow’s lowering coast.

VII.

And art thou gone? I deem’d thee some
Immortal essence—art thou gone?—
I saw thee laid within the tomb,
And turn’d away to mourn alone:
Once to have loved, is to have loved
Enough; and, what with thee I proved,
Again I’ll seek in none.

VIII.

Earth in thy sight grew faËry land;—
Life was Elysium—thought was love,—
When, long ago, hand clasp’d in hand,
We roam’d through Autumn’s twilight grove;
Or watch’d the broad uprising moon
Shed, as it were, a wizard noon,
The blasted heath above.

IX.

Farewell!—and must I say farewell?—
No—thou wilt ever be to me
A present thought; thy form shall dwell
In love’s most holy sanctuary;
Thy voice shall mingle with my dreams,
And haunt me, when the shot-star gleams
Above the rippling sea.

X.

Never revives the past again;
But still thou art, in lonely hours,
To me earth’s heaven,—the azure main,—
Soft music,—and the breath of flowers;
My heart shall gain from thee its hues:
And Memory give, though Truth refuse,
The bliss that once was ours!

After this, Mr Batter read over to us a great many other curiosities, about foreign things wonderful to hear, and foreign places wonderful to behold. Moreover, also, of divers adventures by sea and land. But the time wearing late, and Tammie Bodkin having brought ben the shop-key, after putting on the window-shutters, Nanse and I, out of good-fellowship, thought we could not do less than ask the honest man, whose cleverality had diverted us so much, to sit still and take a chack of supper;—James being up in the air, from having been allowed to ride on his hobby so briskly, made only a show of objection; so, after a rizzard haddo, we had a jug of toddy, and sat round the fire with our feet on the fender—Benjie having fallen asleep with his clothes on, and been carried away to his bed. Poor bit mannikin!

I never remember to have heard James so prime either on Boston or Josephus; but as his heart warmed with the liquor and the good fire, for it was a cold rawish night,—he returned to Taffy with the pigtail’s master; and insisted, that as we had heard about his foreign sweetheart’s death, which he appeared to have taken so much to heart, we should just bear with him once more, as he read over what he called her dirgie, which was written on a half-sheet of grey mouldy paper—as if handed down from the days of the Covenanters. It jingles well; and both Nanse and me thought it gey and pretty; but eh! if ye only had heard how James Batter read it. It beat cock-fighting.

DIRGE.

I.

Weep not for her!—Oh she was far too fair,
Too pure to dwell on this guilt-tainted earth!
The sinless glory, and the golden air
Of Zion, seem’d to claim her from her birth;
A Spirit wander’d from its native Zone,
Which, soon discovering, took her for its own:
Weep not for Her!

II.

Weep not for her!—Her span was like the sky,
Whose thousand stars shine beautiful and bright;
Like flowers that know not what it is to die;
Like long-linked, shadeless months of Polar light;
Like music floating o’er a waveless lake,
While Echo answers from the flowery brake:
Weep not for Her!

III.

Weep not for her!—She died in early youth,
Ere hope had lost its rich romantic hues;
When human bosoms seem’d the homes of truth,
And earth still gleam’d with beauty’s radiant dews.
Her summer prime waned not to days that freeze;
Her wine of life was run not to the lees:
Weep not for Her!

IV.

Weep not for her—By fleet or slow decay,
It never grieved her bosom’s core to mark
The playmates of her childhood wane away,
Her prospects wither, or her hopes grow dark;
Translated by her God with spirit shriven,
She pass’d as ’twere in smiles from earth to heaven:
Weep not for Her!

V.

Weep not for her!—It was not hers to feel
The miseries that corrode amassing years,
’Gainst dreams of baffled bliss the heart to steel,
To wander sad down age’s vale of tears,
As whirl the wither’d leaves from friendship’s tree,
And on earth’s wintry wold alone to be:
Weep not for Her!

VI.

Weep not for her!—She is an angel now,
And treads the sapphire floors of paradise:
All darkness wiped from her refulgent brow,
Sin, sorrow, suffering, banish’d from her eyes;
Victorious over death, to her appear
The vista’d joys of heaven’s eternal year;
Weep not for Her!

VII.

Weep not for her!—Her memory is the shrine
Of pleasant thoughts, soft as the scent of flowers.
Calm as on windless eve the sun’s decline,
Sweet as the song of birds among the bowers,
Rich as a rainbow with its hues of light,
Pure as the moonshine of an autumn night:
Weep not for Her.

VIII.

Weep not for her!—There is no cause for woe;
But rather nerve the spirit that it walk
Unshrinking o’er the thorny paths below,
And from earth’s low defilements keep thee back:
So, when a few, fleet, severing years have flown,
She’ll meet thee at heaven’s gate—and lead thee on!
Weep not for Her.

Having right and law on my side, as any man of judgment may perceive with half an eye, nothing could hinder me, if I so liked, to print the whole bundle; but, in the meantime, we must just be satisfied with the foregoing curiosities, which we have picked out. All that I have set down concerning myself, the reader may take on credit as open and even-down truth; but as to whether Taffy’s master’s nick-nackets be true or false, every one is at liberty, in this free country, to think for himself. Old sparrows are not easily caught with chaff; and unless I saw a proper affidavit, I would not, for my own part, pin my faith to a single word of them. But every man his own opinion,—that’s my motto.

In the Yankee Almanack of Poor Richard, which, besides the Pilgrim’s Progress and the Book of Martyrs, I whiles read on the week-days for a little diversion, I see it is set down with great rationality, that “we should never buy for the bargain sake.” Experience teaches all men, and I found that to my cost in this matter; for, cheap as the coat and waistcoat seemed which I had bought from the auld-farrant Welsh flunkie with the peaked hat and the pigtail, I made no great shakes of them after all. Neither the Lord Provost of Edinburgh, nor any other of the grand public characters, ever made me an offer for them, as some had led me to expect; and the playhouse people lay all as quiet as ducks in a storm. After hanging at my window for two or three months, collecting all the idle wives and weans of the parish to glour and gaze at them from morn till night, during which time I got half of my lozens broken, by their knocking one another’s heads through, I was obliged to get quit of them at last, by selling them to a man and his son, that kept dancing dogs, Pan’s pipes, and a tambourine; and that made a livelihood by tumbling on a carpet in the middle of the street, the one playing “Carle now the King’s come,” as the other whummled head over heels, and then jumped up into the air, cutting capers, to show that not a bone of his body had been broken.

Knowing that the raiment was not for every body’s wear, and that the like of it was not to be found in a country side, I put a decent price on it, “foreign birds with fair feathers” aye taking the top place of the market. When I mentioned forty shillings to the dancing-dog man and his son, they said nothing, but, putting their tongues in their cheeks, took up their hats, wishing me a good day. Next forenoon, however, a slight-of-hand character having arrived, together with a bass drum and a bugle horn, that was likely to take the shine out of them, and maybe also purchase my article—which was capital for his purpose, having famous wide sleeves—they came back in less than no time, asking the liberty, before finally concluding with me, of carrying them home to their lodgings for ten minutes to see how they would fit; and, in that case, offering me thirty-five shillings and an old flute. The old flute was for next to no use at all, except for wee Benjie, poor thing, too-tooing on, to keep him good, and I told them so, myself being no musicianer; but would take their offer not to quarrel. It would not do unless some of us were timber-tuned; men not being meant for blackbirds.

Home went the man, and home went the son, and home went my grand coat and waistcoat over his arm; and putting my hands into my breeches pockets, as if I had satisfactorily concluded a great transaction, I marched ben to the back shop, and took my needle into play, as if nothing in the world had happened; but where their home lay, or whether the raiment fitted or not, goodness knows, having never to this blessed hour heard word or wittens of either of them. Such a pair of blacks! It just shows us how simple we Scotch folk are. The London man swindled me out of my lawful room-rent and my Sunday velveteens; the Eirishers, as will be but too soon seen, made free with my hen-house, committing felonious robbery at the dead hour of night; and here a decent-looking old Welshman, with a pigtail tied with black tape, palmed a grand coat and waistcoat upon me, that were made away with by a man and his son, a devilish deal too long out of Botany Bay.

Benjie, poor doggie, was vastly proud of the flute, which he fifed away on morning, noon, and night; and, for more than a fortnight, would not go to his bed unless it was laid under his pillow. But for me I could not bide the sight of it, knowing whose hands it had been in, and reminding me as it did of the depravity of human nature.

Verily, verily, this is a wonderfully wicked world. To find out the two vagabonds would have been hopeless; unless I could have followed them to the Back of Beyond, where the mare foaled the fiddler.