My eyes are dim with childish tears,
My heart is idly stirr’d,
For the same sound is in mine ears,
Which in those days I heard.
Thus fares it still in our decay;
And yet the wiser mind
Mourns less for what age takes away,
Than what it leaves behind.

Wordsworth.

After consultation with friends, and much serious consideration on such a momentous subject, it having been finally settled on between the wife and myself to educate Benjie to the barber and haircutting line, we looked round about us in the world for a suitable master to whom we might entrust our dear laddie, he having now finished his education, and reached his fourteenth year.

It was visible in a twinkling to us both, that his apprenticeship could not be gone through with at home in that first-rate style which would enable him to reach the top of the tree in his profession; yet it gave us a sore heart to think of sending away, at so tender an age, one who was so dear to his mother and me, and whom we had, as it were, in a manner made a pet of; so we reckoned it best to article him for a twelvemonth with Ebenezer Packwood at the corner, before finally sending him off to Edinburgh, to get his finishing in the wig, false-curl, and hair-baking department, under Urquhart, Maclachlan, or Connal. Accordingly, I sent for Eben to come and eat an egg with me—matters were entered upon and arranged—Benjie was sent on trial; and though at first he funked and fought refractory, he came, to the astonishment of his master and the old apprentice, in less than no time to cut hair without many visible shear-marks; and, within the first quarter, succeeded, without so much as drawing blood, to unbristle, for a wager of his master’s, the Saturday night’s countenance of Daniel Shoebrush himself, who was as rough as a badger.

Having thus done for Benjie, it now behoved me to have an eye towards myself; for, having turned the corner of manhood, I found that I was beginning to be wearing away down the hillside of life. Customers, who had as much faith in me as almost in their Bible with regard to every thing connected with my own department, and who could depend on their cloth being cut according to the newest and most approved fashions, began now and then to return a coat upon my hand for alteration, as being quite out of date; while my daily work, to which in the days of other years I had got up blithe as the lark, instead of being a pleasure, came to be looked forward to with trouble and anxiety, weighing on my heart as a care, and on my shoulders as a burden.

Finding but too severely that such was the case, and that there is no contending with the course of nature, I took sweet counsel together with James Batter over a cup of tea and a cookie, concerning what it was best for a man placed in my circumstances to betake myself to.

As industry ever has its own reward, let me without brag or boasting be allowed to state, that, in my own case, it did not disappoint my exertions. I had sat down a tenant, and I was now not only the landlord of my own house and shop, but of all the back tenements to the head of the garden, as also of the row of one-story houses behind, facing to the loan, in the centre of which Lucky Thamson keeps up the sign of the Tankard and Tappit Hen. It was also a relief to my mind, as the head of my family, that we had cut Benjie loose from his mother’s apron-string, poor fellow, and set him adrift in an honest way of doing to buffet the stormy ocean of life; so, every thing considered, it was found that enough and to spare had been laid past by Nanse and me to spend the evening of our days by the lound dykeside of domestic comfort.

In Tammie Bodkin, to whom I trust I had been a dutiful, as I know I was an honoured master, I found a faithful journeyman, he having served me in that capacity for nine years; so, it is not miraculous, being constantly, during that period, under my attentive eye, that he was now quite a deacon in all the departments of the business. As an eident scholar he had his reward; for customers, especially during the latter years, when my sight was scarcely so good, came at length to be not very scrupulous as to whether their cloth was cut by the man or his master. Never let filial piety be overlooked:—when I first patronized Tammie, and promoted him to the dignity of sitting crosslegged along with me on the working-board, he was a hatless and shoeless ragamuffin, the orphan lad of a widowed mother, whose husband had been killed by a chain-shot, which carried off his head, at the bloody battle of the Nile, under Lord Nelson. Tammie was the oldest of four, and the other three were lasses, that knew not in the morning where the day’s providing was to come from, except by trust in Him who sent the ravens to Elijah. By allowing Tammie a trifle for board-wages, I was enabled to add my mite to the comforts of the family; for he was kind, frugal, and dutiful, and would willingly share with them to the last morsel. In the course of a few years he became his mother’s bread-winner, the lasses being sent to service—I myself having recommended one of them to Deacon Burlings, and another to Springheel the dancing-master; retaining Katie, the youngest, for ourselves, to manage the kitchen, and go messages when required.

Providence having thus blessed Tammie’s efforts in the paths of industrious sobriety, what could I do better—James Batter being exactly of the same opinion—than make him my successor; giving him the shop at a cheap rent, the stock in trade at a moderate valuation, and the good-will of the business as a gratis gift.

Having recommended Tammie to public patronage and support, he is now, as all the world knows, a thriving man; nor, from Berwick Bridge to Johnny Groat’s, is it in the power of any gentleman to have his coat cut in a more fashionable way, or on more moderate terms, than at the sign of the Goose and the Pair of Shears rampant.

Leaving Tammie to take care of his own matters, as he is well able to do, allow me to observe, that it is curious how habit becomes a second nature, and how the breaking in upon the ways we have been long and long accustomed to, through the days of the years that are past, is as the cutting asunder of the joints and marrow. This I found bitterly, even though I had the prospect before me of spending my old age in peace and plenty. I could not think of leaving my auld house—every room, every nook in it was familiar to my heart. The garden trees seemed to wave their branches sorrowfully over my head, as bidding me a farewell; and when I saw all the scraighing hens catched out of the hen-house I had twenty years before built and tiled with my own hands, and tumbled into a sack, to be carried on limping Jock Dalgleish’s back up to our new abode at Lugton, my heart swelled to my mouth, and the mist of gushing tears bedimmed my eyesight. Four of Thomas Burlings’ flour carts stood laden before the door with our furniture, on the top of which were three of Nanse’s grand geraniums in flower-pots, with five of my walking-sticks tied together with a string; and as I paced through the empty rooms, where I had passed so many pleasant and happy hours, the sound of my feet on the bare floor seemed in my ears like an echo from the grave. On our road to Lugton I could scarcely muster common sense to answer a person who wished us a good-day; and Nanse, as we daundered on arm-in-arm, never once took her napkin from her een. Oh, but it was a weary business!

Being in this sober frame of mind, allow me to wind up this chapter—the last catastrophe of my eventful life that I mean at present to make public—with a few serious reflections; as it fears me, that, in much of what I have set down, ill-natured people may see a good deal scarcely consistent with my character for douceness and circumspection; but if many wonderfuls have befallen to my share, it would be well to remember that a man’s lot is not of his own making.

Musing within myself on the chances and changes of time, the uncertainties of life, the frail thread by which we are tacked to this world, and how the place that now knows us shall soon know us no more, I could not help, for two or three days previous to my quitting my dear old house and shop, taking my stick into my hand, and wandering about all my old haunts and houffs—and need I mention that among these were the road down to the Duke’s south gate with the deers on it, the waterside by Woodburn, the Cow-brigg, up the back street, through the flesh-market, and over to the auld kirk in among the headstones? For three walks, on three different days, I set out in different directions; yet, strange to say! I aye landed in the kirkyard:—and where is the man of woman born proud enough to brag, that it shall not be his fate to land there at last?

Headstones and headstones around me! some newly put up, and others mossy and grey; it was a humbling yet an edifying sight, preaching, as forcibly as ever Maister Wiggie did in his best days, of the vanity and the passingness of all human enjoyments. Mouldered to dust beneath the turfs lay the blithe laddies with whom I have a hundred times played merry games on moonlight nights; some were soon cut off; others grew up to their full estate; and there stood I, a greyhaired man, among the weeds and nettles, mourning over times never to return!

The reader will no doubt be anxious to hear a few words regarding my son Benjie, who has turned out just as his friends and the world expected. After his time with Ebenezer Packwood in Dalkeith, he served for four years in Edinburgh, where he cut a distinguished figure, having shaved and shorn lots of the nobility and gentry; among whom was a French Duchess, and many other foreigners of distinction. In short, nothing went down at the principal hotels but the expertness of Mr Benjamin Wauch; and, had he been so disposed, he could have commenced on his own footing with every chance of success; but knowing himself fully young, and being anxious to see more of the world before settling, he took out a passage in one of the Leith smacks, and set sail for London, where he arrived, after a safe and prosperous voyage, without a hair of his head injured. The only thing that I am ashamed to let out about him is, that he is now, and has been for some time past, principal shopman in a Wallflower Hair-powder and Genuine Macassar Oil Warehouse, kept by three Frenchmen, called Moosies Peroukey.

But, though our natural enemies, he writes me that he has found them agreeable and chatty masters, full of good manners and pleasant discourse, first-rate in their articles, and, except in their language, almost Christians.

I aye thought Benjie was a genius; and he is beginning to show himself his father’s son, being in thoughts of taking out a patent for making hair-oil from rancid butter. If he succeeds it will make the callant’s fortune. But he must not marry Madamoselle Peroukey without my especial consent, as Nanse says, that her having a Frenchwoman for her daughter-in-law would be the death of her.