Chapter VIII: Part 8

The rivulet connected with this little lake was one of those which, rising in a large basin of hilly country, are liable to be swelled occasionally in a very short space of time, so that, though at one hour they may scarcely show a rill among the channel-stones, they are the next raging like a large and impetuous river. On the present occasion, being fed by the cloud just spoken of, it came down in one of its most awful forms, and in one instant broke up the ice upon the peaceful lake with a noise like thunder. The children who had been sliding, though they scarcely had a moment of warning, escaped from the ice—all except one, Susan Hamilton, the daughter of the leading manufacturer in the village. She had been the last to approach a gulf which had been leaped by all the rest, and, her heart failing her at the moment, she was immediately carried off from the land upon a large board of ice. What had lately been the solid surface of the lake was now gathered in a large glacier of peaky fragments at the bottom, while all around the water was extending far beyond its usual limits. Susan Hamilton was soon drifted down to this mass of ice, where, from the top of a lofty pinnacle, she cried loudly for help, which, however, was every moment becoming more difficult to be rendered. The most of her companions had fled in childish terror to the village; but as the danger was instant, there seemed little chance of rescue from that quarter. Fortunately a young man who had accompanied some friends to Sarkinholm happened to be returning to Daldaff, and, hearing cries of distress, rushed up to the spot. Though the twilight was now deepening, he perceived the situation of the child, and being perfectly acquainted with the ground, he immediately resolved upon a plan of rescue. A large board of ice happened to be lying in a creek near the place where he stood. Upon this he fearlessly embarked, and, guiding it by means of his curling-brush, he soon reached the iceberg to which Susan Hamilton was clinging. Having prevailed upon her to leap down into his arms, he placed her carefully on board his icy raft, and then steered back towards the shore, where by this time a few of the villagers, including the child’s father, were collected. He was so fortunate as to return in safety, and had the satisfaction—which Bishop Burnet considered to be the greatest on earth—of rendering a man truly happy. The joy of the father was speechless; but the other villagers raised a shout of admiration in honour of his heroic conduct. Nor was the general feeling abated, when, immediately after he had regained the shore, the vast glacier, loosed from its confinement at the bottom of the lake, was precipitated down the channel of the stream, where it tumbled and dashed along with the resistless force of rocks thrown down a hill-side, and the noise of a hurricane in a forest. It was seen that if he had hesitated but for a minute to adventure upon his perilous task, the child must have perished, almost before her father’s eyes.

James Hamilton, who had this evening experienced the opposites of extreme agony and extreme happiness, was only a mere long-headed specimen of the weavers of Daldaff. Having saved a little money, and acquired a reputation for prudence and honesty, he had been able, when the Glasgow work was first introduced into the village, to get himself appointed by a manufacturing house in that city as agent for supplying employment to his brethren; and as he not only enjoyed a commission upon the labours of his neighbours, but also kept a number of looms going upon his own account, he might be considered the most prosperous man in the village. He had been married for many years, but was blessed with only one child, the fair young girl who was rescued from death in the manner above described. He was one of those individuals, who, though entitled to praise for their correct dealings and sagacious conduct in life, are yet apt to excite dislike by their contenting themselves too exclusively with those properties, and not showing enough of the amenity and friendliness of disposition, by which alone society at large is rendered agreeable. You could always make sure that James Hamilton would do you no wrong, but you were also impressed with the certainty that neither would he do you any good; and if it be possible that there can be an excess of circumspection and prudence, he erred in that excess. Rarely giving way to feeling himself, he could hardly believe that it existed in others, or, if he did acknowledge its existence, he despised it as only the symptom of an unworldly character. Even on seeing a single and beloved child rescued from destruction, though he could not repress the first gush of grateful and joyful emotion, he almost immediately after relapsed into his usual coldness, and seemed to chide himself for having been betrayed into that excitement.

Adam Cuthbertson, who had done for him almost the greatest service that one man could do to another, was the son of a poor widow in Sarkinholm, and now resided with a relation at Daldaff, under whom he was acquiring the universal craft of the district. Though graced with only a very limited education, and condemned to almost unceasing toil, Adam was a youth of some spirit and ingenuity. An old _black buke_ of Scotch songs lay constantly on the beam at his left hand, and the rush of the shuttle and the dunt of the lay went in unison with as clear a pipe as ever lilted up the notes of our national minstrelsy. It was even whispered that Adam had himself composed a few songs, or there were at least certain ditties which the lasses of Daldaff might occasionally be heard singing at their washings on the haugh, and which were privately attributed to his pen—though, it is to be remarked, his modesty would never permit him to confess the soft impeachment. Adam also contrived to obtain some scientific books, which he pored over at night by his uncle’s fireside, or, in summer, beneath a little bower which he had constructed in the garden. He was thought to be less steady at his work than some duller lads, and the case was not mended by a particular improvement which he had carried into effect upon the machinery of his loom. Although he practically demonstrated that he could work more with the same trouble by means of this alteration, the old workmen only shook their heads at it, and wished he might work as much with it in the long-run. It happened one day, that, as he was _dressing_ his web with the brushes, he lost his balance by mere accident, and fell head foremost through the white expanse before him, producing, of course, irremediable ruin. “Ay, ay,” remarked some of the old stagers, “I never thought ony gude would come o’ thae improvements. Wha ever heard o’ ony _ordinar_ workman playing sic a plisky?” Others, less disposed to observe the strict doctrines of causation, would ask what else could be expected of “that newfangled way o’ working the hiddles.” The very minister, honest man, was heard to hazard a quiet witticism on the subject, not from any ill-will towards his young parishioner, but just because the joke could hardly be avoided: “I was aye jalousing,” said the worthy divine one day to his elder, James Hamilton, “that Yedie wad some day or other fa’ through his wark.” It is to be mentioned with regret that Hamilton, notwithstanding his obligations to the young man, was one of those who regarded his frank-spirited character and forward genius with least favour. This did not appear to be solely the result of the opposition of their characters. Hamilton, who, in any circumstances, would have been sure to disapprove of the qualities manifested by Adam Cuthbertson, appeared almost to have contracted an additional dislike for him, on account of the very obligation which ought to have made him his friend. He seemed to dread the claims which the rescue of his child might establish, and acted as if he thought it necessary to give as little encouragement to those claims as possible.

There was, however, _one_ individual who did full justice both to the superior character and the gallant achievement of Cuthbertson. This was Susan Hamilton, the fair young girl whom he had saved. Susan at the time of her rescue was too young to regard her deliverer with any other feeling than that of grateful respect. But as she advanced towards womanhood, the childish feeling of awe with which she had always beheld him when they chanced to meet, became gradually exchanged for a sentiment of a softer and tenderer character, though not less bashful and abased. Adam’s feelings towards her experienced a similar change. Ever after the day when he saved her life, he had taken rather more interest in that fair head and those sweet blue eyes, than in the features of any other child of the same age whom he saw tripping to school. But this feeling was merely one of circumstances. It solely referred to the adventure by which he had been so happy as to restore her to the arms of her father. Susan, however, in a very few years, ceased to be a little girl tripping to school. Her figure became considerably taller, and more attractive. Her blue eyes became filled with deeper and more thoughtful meanings. Her cheek, when she approached her deliverer, assumed a richer hue; and her voice, when it addressed him, surprised him with new tones. Sometimes he would hardly _permit himself to think_ that she was in the least different from what she had been. He would still speak to her as a man addressing a child. But after they had parted, he would feel his soul troubled with a delight he had never before experienced. He would _feel_, though he did not think, that she was different. Need any more be said than that he in time found himself at once loving and beloved? The sun never set with a richer glow, nor did the flowers ever give out a richer perfume, than on the evening, when, in the woods of Craigcross, Adam Cuthbertson and Susan Hamilton first confessed their mutual attachment.

But fate was adverse to the passion of these amiable beings. James Hamilton, with all his homely wisdom, had so far given way to a wretched ambition as to wish his daughter to match in a sphere above his own rank. Laird Ganderson, of Windigate, had marked out Susan at church as a very proper person to undertake the management of his household, an office just become vacant in consequence of the death of his mother. Being arrived at the full and perfect age of forty-seven years, the beauty of the young lady was perhaps a smaller consideration with the laird, than the contiguity of a few fields lately purchased by her father, to his own somewhat dilapidated property. He therefore made some overtures to James Hamilton, which that individual listened to in a manner far from unfavourable. It was soon made up between them that Susan was to become Mrs Ganderson: all that remained to be done was to gain the approbation of the young woman herself towards the scheme. Susan, who, in addition to many better qualities, possessed a gift of rustic humour, endeavoured to convey her sentiments to the laird in a delicate way, by one evening frying him a dish of sliced peats instead of Scotch collops; but the laird took it all as a good joke, and said he only liked her the better for her waggery. In fact, being anxious to have her only on the ordinary principles of a mercantile speculation, he was not to be turned aside by any nice delicacy, any more than he would have been prevented from buying a horse at a fair, by the animal showing a reluctance to part with its former proprietor. On the other hand, Cuthbertson felt in a manner entirely different. A taunt which he received one night from the father, respecting the narrowness of his circumstances and prospects, determined him to quit Daldaff in search of fortune, taking no care but first to interchange with Susan a vow of eternal fidelity.

For one full year Susan was enabled to parry the addresses of the laird and the entreaties of her father. The former spent a great part of every day at James Hamilton’s, where he smoked incessantly, or, if he ceased at all, it was only to ask for liquor, or to utter a ribald jest. By this familiarity he only rendered himself the more intolerable to Susan. But it had a different effect upon the father. The laird became so thoroughly ingratiated with that individual, that there was no exertion of friendship which Hamilton would not make in his behalf. In fact, in order to secure to his daughter the eclat of being lady of Windigate, he was understood to have compromised all that he was worth in the world in securities for the behoof of his future son-in-law, whose fortune was suspected to be in no very flourishing condition. The unfortunate weaver exemplified a very common failing in the most sagacious characters, namely, a disposition, after a whole lifetime of prudence, to give way to some notably ridiculous error, which is rendered unalarming to them from its being totally different in character and tendency from any that they have been accustomed to avoid.

At length came evil days. Owing to some turn of affairs in the progress of the war, cotton-weaving experienced a severe shock, by which many of the best Glasgow houses were materially damaged, and thousands of operatives throughout the country were thrown out of work. The very respectable establishment for which Hamilton had long acted as agent, lingered for a time in existence, and was able occasionally to send a small scantling of work, hardly enough to employ a tenth part of the population of the village. When the carrier was expected to come with these small supplies, numbers of poor men, attended by their wives and children, all of whom were alike unemployed, would go out for miles to meet the eagerly expected vehicle, to learn how much work was brought, and what prospect there was of more. On the small bag being opened by Hamilton, and perhaps only three webs being displayed, the grief of the poor people was beyond all description. The married men would then, by Hamilton’s directions, draw lots for those precious morsels of employment. While this process went forward, what eager breathless hope in the faces of both men and women, tempered, at the same time, by a religious sense of the misery which each man knew that his own success would inflict upon some equally deserving neighbour! What despair was depicted in each honest homely face, as it turned from the fatal lottery, upon the unhappy family group, which, more eagerly than himself, had watched the result of his throw! With what joy, mingled with sad sympathies for the rest, would the successful man bear home his load, though he knew that the price of his labour would hardly be sufficient to supply the food necessary to support him, even though he were to work sixteen hours a-day! At length, towards winter, even these wretchedly insufficient supplies were stopped. Hamilton’s employers, after every effort to keep themselves afloat, were obliged to give way also; and, consequently, the Daldaff agency became at once a dead letter. People talk of the exemption of the present generation from disasters by fire and sword, which so frequently befell their ancestors; but what calamity was ever inflicted upon the poor, even in the most lawless days of past history, equal to the desolation which is now so often occasioned in a large district, by a total cessation of the staple employment? The cots which gave shelter to our ancestors, were rebuilt in three days, after even the most savage invasion; the herds, which had been gathered off to some place of security, were restored to their indestructible pastures. The calamity, if unaccompanied by severe loss of life, must have been only, in general, an exciting adventure. But what retreat, what consolation is there for the hordes of poor artizans, who, by some commercial accident, arising, perhaps, from the imprudence of a few merchants, or some political or warlike movement, are deprived of the customary weekly pittance? It may be relied on, that such disasters exceed in measure of sorrow almost any kind of historical distress, except those of plague or famine. No other accident but these last ever introduced such coldness to the poor man’s hearth, such despair to his heart, or made him regret with so bitter a pang that he had others to care for besides himself.

Amidst the public calamity, one of a most grievous nature overtook the father of our heroine. The affairs of the laird, which had long been desperately out of order, and for some time were only sustained by the aid of his intended father-in-law, came to a complete stand-still; and, the whole wealth of James Hamilton being engaged in securities, he was at once reduced to the condition in which he had entered life. The stroke at first seemed likely to be fatal. Thus to lose the whole earnings of a laborious life—to forfeit, at the eleventh hour, by one miserable piece of imprudence, all the honours of the wisely spent day, was more, almost, than he could bear. He had, however, two comforters in his affliction—the worthy old minister, who in these calamitous times had been a succouring angel to his flock—and his daughter, an angel of a still more gracious kind, who, forgetting all the severities with which she had been treated, and thinking only of his present affliction, applied herself to the sacred task of soothing his wounded mind, and inspiring him with hopes of better times. The change of his circumstances produced a complete change in the mind of Hamilton. Having no longer wealth to care for, the jealous sentinels with which he had guarded it were withdrawn. The crust of worldly selfishness was broken off his character, and all its better affections were again called into free play. His eyes were now opened to the wickedness of which he had been guilty, in endeavouring to force the affections of his daughter, and he only wished that he were again as he had been a twelvemonth before, in order to make her happy with the man of her heart.

Weeks of partial famine passed on, and now the distresses of the villagers were suddenly doubled by the premature commencement of a very severe winter. With the exception of their small patches of potatoes and garden vegetables, there seemed hardly any resource for them during the whole winter. The minister, whose own income was exhausted in providing for their wants, thought it necessary, under these distressing circumstances, to call them all together, and join them in one solemn exercise of humiliation appropriate to the occasion. Just as this was concluded, a boy belonging to an inn about ten miles distant upon the Glasgow road, arrived, after a toilsome journey through the snow, and gave the joyful news that a cart filled with webs was storm-stayed at his master’s house, on its way to the village, the trade having suddenly experienced a slight revival. Transported with this intelligence, though no one could guess by whom the work could have been sent, they one and all resolved to proceed to Redcraigs, where the cart was lying, and aid in clearing a way for it through the snow. Every spade and semblance of a spade was then put in requisition, and the half of the bannocks in the village were brought forward, without the least regard to individual property, to provision the troop of pioneers. Thirty men set out early next morning on this expedition, graced with the blessings and prayers of all who saw them depart.

The snow, it was found, had only fallen to the depth of three feet, but it was drifted in many hollow parts of the road to six times that depth, so as to present an insurmountable obstacle to the progress of a cart. At all those places the weavers exerted themselves as they advanced to clear away the gelid heaps. The toil was most severe; but what these poor starved men wanted in strength, they made up by zeal—that zeal, above all others, which is inspired by the wish of answering the clamour of a hungry family circle with the necessary bite. The thought that work was before them, that money would again be procured, and, for that money, food to supply “the bairns at hame,” nerved every arm with superhuman energy; and as the country people every where lent a willing, though less enthusiastic assistance, the party had before mid-day cleared their way to Redcraigs. What was their surprise on being met there by their friend Adam Cuthbertson, of whom they had not heard ever since he left Daldaff, and who now informed them, with ineffable pleasure beaming in his eyes, that he had been the happy means of procuring them this supply of work. He had entered, he said, into the service of a manufacturer at Glasgow, and having divulged to him a plan of improving the loom, had been advanced to a very onerous place of trust in the factory. His employer having weathered on till the present revival of trade, he had used the little influence he had, to get his old master, of whose misfortunes he had heard, appointed to an agency, and was favoured with one of the very first parcels of work that was to be had, which he was now conveying to the relief of his old friends at Daldaff. “Let us on now, my friends,” cried Adam; “and, before night is far spent, we shall be able to tell the women and the bairns that the bad times are now blown by, and that every one will get his porridge and his broth as he used to do.” The cavalcade then set forward, the cart drawn by three horses in line, and every man more ready than another, either to clear away the drifted heap that lay before it, or to urge it with his desperate shoulder over every such impediment that might happen to be left. Though the way was long, and the labour severe, and the strength of the poor weavers not very great, yet every eye and voice maintained its cheerfulness, and the song, the jest, and the merry tale, were kept up to the very last. The wintry sun had set upon the snowy hills ere the procession came within sight of Daldaff; yet all the women and children were collected at the Loanbraehead, near the village, to see it approach; and when the cart was first discerned turning a neighbouring height, with its large attendant train, a shout of natural joy arose through the clear air, such as might burst from those who gaze from the shore upon a wreck, and see the crew, one by one, make their escape from destruction. James Hamilton was there, though much reduced by a recent illness; and the joy which seized him on being informed by the workmen of his appointment, was almost too much for his frame. He looked in vain, however, for Cuthbertson, to pour before him the thanks of a repentant spirit. That excellent young man had eluded the observation of all, and, diving through some of the lanes of the village, had taken refuge in the house of his uncle. He found that much as he had longed to see gladness once more restored to these poor villagers, he could not endure the scene at last. He had therefore escaped from their gratitude; and it was not till Hamilton sought him in his old lodgings, that he was at length discovered. The old man took him warmly by the hand, which he did not quit, till, leading him to his own house, he deposited it in that of his fair daughter. “Susan Hamilton,” said he, “twice have you been saved by this good youth; you are now fairly his own property—you are no longer mine. May you both be happy!”

FLITTING DAY.

Our readers will perhaps recollect a former article, in which we treated of the subject of removals—that is to say, the practice so general in Scotland (though otherwise in England) of shifting almost every year from one house to another, in a constant expectation of finding the TO KALON, as the Greeks call it, or, as we shall rather style it, the QUITE THE THING of house accommodation, which, however, is discovered at one year’s end to be exactly as remote as it was a twelvemonth before, and still, like general happiness, is “on before”—far looming over the horizon, like a vessel bound for some distant part of the globe, and not to be caught or overtaken, let us speed after it as we may. We have heard various individuals acknowledge that there were some good _home truths_ in that article, though we rather believe the housewives in general were surprised at our blindness to the beauties of a good back-green. Let that be as it may, there was one thing in which that article was totally deficient—to wit, an account of the particular horrors of _removing day_ itself, or, as we in Scotland call it, _flitting day_—a day styled in the calendar Whitsunday, and dedicated to we don’t know what sacred use, but which, without regard to its sacred use, whatever that may be, we think men might wish that, above all others, it were fairly blotted out of the calendar—expunged from the very year itself—utterly annihilated and forgotten, because of the unhappy secular use to which it has been put from time immemorial. The 25th of May, or Whitsunday old style, is indeed a day of peculiar agony amongst us. It is a day consecrated to the disruption of all local ties, to the rending of every kind of pleasant association, to the discomfiture of all the household goods. The very week in which it occurs, is black with its atmosphere of pain.

It may be surprising to persons unacquainted with Scotland, that the people should be so fond of removing, since the day on which that event takes place is apt to be so very disagreeable. They might as well wonder that people should ever marry, when they know so very well that the charge of a family is apt to be burdensome. Candlemas day, on which people take their houses, is a day of heedless joy, a day of fond and delirious anticipation; and Whitsunday is to it what execution-day is to the particular time when an unfortunate man was tempted to enrich himself at some other body’s expense. “On Wednesday I killed my wife, on Saturday I was hanged,” as the child’s rhyme goes: no one can doubt that Wednesday was in this case a very pleasant day, whatever might be the state of the honest man’s feelings at the end of the week. So it is with Candlemas and Whitsunday. On the former of these days we are actuated by a spirit of spite and dissatisfaction with our present abode; it is every thing that is disagreeable, and we must at all hazards get quit of it. Accordingly, the taking of another, and, as we think, better habitation, naturally appears as the opening of a haven of relief, and, of course, we have a great deal of either positive or negative pleasure in the day. Nor is this satisfaction confined to the day on which the new house is leased: it extends up to the very commencement of that week of suffering which involves Whitsunday—up to the first material disarrangement of furniture preparatory to removal. During the time which elapses between the leasing of the new habitation and our removal to it, we abandon all care for our present abode. Any thing that goes wrong about it must just remain so. If a lock were required for the door, we would scarcely put ourselves to the trouble of getting it, but remain content with some provisional system of security, such as putting a table behind it. A large piece of plaster might fall down from the ceiling, or half of the floor of the dining-room sink into the kitchen—a whole gable or side-wall, almost, might fall away, but we would never think of troubling ourselves with any attempt at repairs. It is a horrid house at any rate, and, for all the time we are to be in it, it does not matter. We’ll soon be getting into our nice new house, and I’ll warrant you no plaster will fall down from the ceiling _there_, nor either floor or gable give way. Every thing will be right when we get to —— Street. The house, under this system of feeling, begins to wear a desolate look. Every thing is permitted, according to the old Scottish phrase, just to hang as it grows. The whole bonds of household discipline are relaxed. The servants, who are to be changed too perhaps, as well as the house, begin to do things _any way_, and yet the mistress hardly chides them. The fact is, she has given up all idea of comfort in the condemned house, and lives entirely on the hope of seeing every thing trig in her new abode. She would make no great complaint, as we verily believe, if the servants obliged her by their carelessness to spend all the remaining part of the lease up to her knees in water. Every thing will be right when we get to —— Street, so we’ll just put up with it. Every now and then one of the children comes in, like the messengers in Macbeth, to tell her of the progress of mischief. One has to mention, that a boy throwing stones has just broken two panes in the drawing-room window, the lower chess having been up at the time. No matter; all will be right when we get to —— Street. Another “cream-faced loon” rushes in to say, that the girls in the kitchen have just broken down the grate, and snapped the poker in two. No matter; all will be right when we get to —— Street. Nay, it is not too much to suppose that, although she were told of the house having just begun to sink into the earth, she would take it all with the most philosophic coolness, and console herself for every present mishap by a reference to the joys which are to be experienced in that home of promise. The prospect of a removal, it will be observed, is thus enough even to revolutionise human nature. People abandon their most cherished objects of care, and disregard that of which they are in general most solicitous, under the influence of this prospect. Like the pilgrim of Bunyan (not to speak it profanely), they thrust their fingers in their ears, in order to shut out all lateral subjects of thought, and rush on—on—on towards the new house.

At last the throes of actual removal begin to be felt, and, for the time, all happy anticipation is deadened within us. You have long ago ascertained, by a ceremonious call upon the present tenants of your new mansion, that they cannot remove an hour before Whitsunday at noon, which gives you the comfortable assurance that your flitting will be, like a sharp fever, soon over. The lady who is coming to _your_ house soon after makes a ceremonious call upon _you_, and ascertains, of course, that you can only remove at that hour also. If matters should happen otherwise—if you are either going to a house altogether new, or to one which can be vacated a short while before the term-day, then what a convenience it is!—we shall have the painters in, and get it all put to rights before we flit a single stick; and after it is all right, we shall remove quite at our leisure. By this plan we shall not only avoid the risk of breaking things, which is always the case in a hurried flitting, but we shall get porters and carters a great deal cheaper, for these fellows, you know, charge three wages on the actual term-day, when every body is flitting. But if it should happen, as above mentioned, that you are limited to a few hours, so that your furniture, as it goes out, will meet the furniture of another person coming in, and, as it goes in, will meet, in tug of war, that of another person coming out, then the blessed anticipation of your future comforts in “that nice house” reconciles you to every thing, and you make yourself think that, after all, it is better, when one _is_ flitting, to have it all over in the shortest possible space of time.

Sometimes, even when you have a vantage space, you are strangely jockeyed out of it before you are aware. Say the house is to be painted before you go into it. Being quite at your ease, you are satisfied that the painters are engaged about two months before the term. You know very well that these men are the greatest of all rascals; that, indeed, they have no other principle within them but just to put people to as much trouble as possible. But two months! that must surely be sufficient. Well, the painters come all this time before the term, and, like the ancient Spanish navigators, take possession of a newly-discovered country, mark the job for their own, by planting a nasty pail in one room, and setting up a brush on end against the wall in another. You look in about a week after, and see the pail and the brush _in statu quo_: the fellows have as yet done nothing but taken _seisin_.[3] You think this is not just quite right, and calling in a cool easy way at the master’s as you go home, express your wish that the job should be immediately proceeded with, being anxious to get into the house as long before the term as possible. The painter is all politeness, and promises to _put men upon the house_ next morning, so that it will be got ready for your reception in _no time_—by which he appears to mean a space of time so brief as not to be worth defining, but which you eventually find to have signified that the job would be finished _not at all in time_. As you come home to your dinner next afternoon, you take a turn that way to see how “the men” are getting on. The house is as empty and desolate as ever; but, from a change in the relative situations of the pail and the brush, you see that they _have_ been there. On inspecting things more minutely, you find that one bed-room has been washed down, and is now, to use a kitchen phrase, _swimming_. Well, this is a beginning, you think. “The men” have been doing what they could to-day, and to-morrow they would be a good way advanced. On this supposition, you take no more thought about the house for three or four days more, when, dropping in as before, you have the satisfaction of seeing that there is _another pail_, and that the ceiling of the dining-room has been whitewashed. Still, dilatory as the rascals evidently are, you hardly think there is a sufficient _casus fœderis_, or breach of treaty, to entitle you to go and blow up the polite man at head-quarters. You suffer for another day; and then, dropping in again, you find a little Flibbertigibbet of a boy exerting himself with his tiny arms to whitewash the ceiling of the parlour. Well, my boy, where are “the men?” This is your question; but for answer you only learn that there have never been any men in the matter—nobody has ever been here but Flibbertigibbet himself. You feel, at this intelligence, almost as much bewildered and obfusculated as George the Second was when he asked an Irish sergeant at a review after the seven years’ war, where was the —— regiment? and was answered, “Please your majesty, I’se the —— regiment;” the Hibernian being in reality the only man that had survived the last campaign. Is this _the men_, you say to yourself, that Mr —— promised to put upon the house? You go of course instantly, and, Mr —— being, by his own good fortune, from home, you leave a note for him, expressed in such terms as you are sure must bring him to his senses, if any thing will. Dropping in next day to see the effect, your ire is soothed at finding three men at work besides Flibbertigibbet, and every thing seems going on so well, that you trouble them no more for a week. But it is needless to pursue this painful theme any farther. Suffice it to say, that, having once got these artists into the house, you feel by and by as if they were never again to be got out; you fear that, contrary to the catastrophe of the well-known jest, there will be no letting go the painter. Their pails, and buckets, and brushes, and all their slopery, are just as rife in the house a week before the term as they were a month earlier; and still to every remonstrance Mr —— replies, that all he can do is to _put on more men next Monday morning_. It is all you can do, perhaps, to get the odious varlets trundled out, “pots and all,” on the very day before you are compelled to remove; so that, instead of having ample scope and verge enough, as you expected, you find that you will be just as much hurried and flurried as if you had been going to a house not previously vacated.

Well, whatever be the foregoing circumstances, flitting day at last arrives in all its horrors. The lady of the household has for several days been storing all kinds of small things by into drawers and boxes, that they might the more safely be transported, so that the family finds itself already deprived of the half of those things which are necessary to comfort, and the whole of what minister to luxury. Your shaving-box is amissing two mornings before flitting day, and has to be fished up, like a “drowned honour,” from the bottom of some abyss of well-regarded trifles. When you come home to dinner on flitting day eve, it is any money for a boot-jack. You take your meals that evening without table-cloths; and unless you can bring down your proud stomach to a brown kitchen bowl, any thing like a comforting drink is out of the question. The crepuscular anguish of the day is already felt. You go to your bed that night off an uncarpeted floor, and in the midst of all kinds of tubs covered up with packsheet, and looking-glasses swaddled up in linen. If you get a nightcap, you may consider yourself lucky above all mortal men. You go to bed, but sleep there is none, for you have to rise next morning long before the usual hour, and the anticipatory sense of what you have to go through that day fills every nook and cranny of your mind. You awake to a rush of children and servants on the stairs; and though you exert every nerve of your memory to recollect the new geography of things in the room, it is ten to one but you stumble over some tub or chest in the dark, where you thought no tub should be; and, upon the whole, the feeling with which you thrust your poor cold distressed shanks into your vestments, is not much short of that which must possess a man about to walk to the scaffold. A breakfast composed of every thing but the proper materials, and taken out of every thing but the proper vessels, collects such a group of shabby slatternly figures as you did not before think yourself husband, or father, or master to. The meal is gulped in agonies of haste, for the carts were to be at the door at seven exactly, and it is now within a few minutes of the hour. Well, the carts come; one by one are your household goods displaced and packed up on those vehicles. Grates are placed on the breadth of their backs at the bottom, by way of ballast. Then mattresses go over them, to make an agreeable flooring for other things. Tables are tumbled a-top, with their legs reared high in the air, like cart-horses enjoying themselves in their Sunday pastures; and to the ropes with which the heaps are bound down, are attached fry-pans, children’s toys, and other light articles, all by way of garnishing. Though far above such things in general, you are obliged on this occasion to see after very mean details, lest your property should suffer some dreadful damage. The more delicate articles are necessarily entrusted to porters or other serviceable individuals, who carry them separately to your new house. “The boys,” glad to escape the school for a day, are employed, to their great satisfaction, in transporting single things, “which don’t break;” and the servants see after certain baskets of crystal and crockery, “which do.” To see all things properly disposed of—each to the individual best fitted for it—is your business, and no easy one it is. At length, after every thing is fairly packed off, the lady and yourself walk away together, the cat following in a pillow-slip under the charge of your second eldest daughter.

Before three in the afternoon, the whole of your furniture, broken and whole, has been thrust, higglety-pigglety, into your new house, where you find all things in the most chaotic state of confusion. Kitchen things repose in the dining-room; drawing-room chairs are deposited in the kitchen; and a huge chest of drawers stands in the vestibule, with a shoulder thrust so far out into the _fair way_ as to render it almost impossible to pass. The kitchen grate is only to be built in after six o’clock in the evening, when the masons are released from their day’s work; so there is no possibility of cooking any thing. A _provisional_ arrangement is therefore made on this point. You, and your wife, and your children, and all your assistants, bivouac in some shabby parlour, and regale yourselves (_absit elegantia_) with rolls and porter. Henry, your eldest son, who has wrought like a Turk all day, leads the feast with his coat off, and the scene can only be compared to a rough-and-tumbling in the back woods of America. No ceremony as to knives. Rolls, and even large loaves, are torn through the middle, and large mouthfuls dug out from the mass by the thumb or forefinger. The liquor goes round in some ordinary vessel, never before appropriated to such a purpose, and all feeling of discomfort being stolen away by the novelty and strong natural feeling of the occasion, the jest and laugh abound. Even in the midst of all the disarray, great hopes and expectations are expressed regarding the new mansion. Such capital high ceilings! Such a broad elegant lobby! So different from that dismal hole we have left! Or, if the ceilings are low, and the lobby narrow, while in the former house they were the reverse, the contrast is drawn in reference to some other points where superiority is indisputable, while the demerits of the new abode are cast discreetly into shade, only to be brought out and complained of at the approach of next Candlemas. You either have left a good view from the windows, or you are entering upon one. Suppose your former house, being in the centre of the town, had hardly any view, then your wife thus comments upon it:—“Such a dark confined place! Nothing to be seen from the windows, but the opposite houses, or else the chimney-stalks and _old wives_. Now, here we are quite in the country. The drawing-room commands Fife and North Berwick Law, and even from the bed-rooms we catch a great lump of the Dalmahoy hills. If we just step to the end of the house, we are into the fields; and then we’ll be so very quiet here, compared with what we were. Not a carriage or a cart passing from morning till night. We’ll get some rest at last; and truth to tell, my health is in great need of it. How truly delightful thus to get fairly out of that black, smoky, noisy town, to a place where we can enjoy all the pleasures of the country, and yet be within reach of every convenience of the city! And just consider how much benefit the walk must be to your own health. We formerly lived so near your place of business, that you got no exercise at all, seeing that I never could prevail upon you to take a walk on purpose. But here you _must_ walk, and the good it must do you will be visible in a week’s time,”—&c. &c. &c. If the case has been totally the reverse, you are addressed as follows:—“How delightful to get fairly away from that cold, out-of-the-world, dull place, and once more feel ourselves snug in the town! We’ve no prospects here from the windows; but, ’deed, when folk have prospects, I never see that they make much use of them. For my part, I never looked out of the drawing-room windows once in the month; for what are the Fife hills or North Berwick Law after one has once seen them? [What philosophy we have here!] And then, what good did we get from the garden? It was just a fash to keep right; and I’m sure, when we had paid the gardener, we did not make a penny off the vegetables. Now, here, although there be little prospect from any of the windows, we’re at least a great deal better protected from the wind. If we have not a garden of our own, have we not the green market almost at the door? And such a weary distance you had to walk every day! No more of that now. Here, when you want a walk, you can take one; and when you don’t like, you can let it alone. Walks are very well, perhaps, in good summer weather; but I’ve no idea of seeing you plash through a long dirty road twice every day through the whole winter. Whenever we want either a walk or a prospect, we’ll get it in the Queen Street gardens; for you know Mrs —— has told me that we may have her key whenever we like. In our old ill-contrived house, we had no place to put any thing off our hand; not so much as a cupboard in the whole house; but now, you see, we have as many presses as rooms, and a capital cellar for coals and lumber. And how near we are here to all the best shops! If it were for nothing but the convenience of getting tea-bread at a minute’s warning from Mr Littlejohn, the baker, whenever any person calls upon us in the evening, it would have been worth while to remove to this house. The lass likewise tells me that there is a very obliging woman, quite at hand, who keeps a mangle for the use of the neighbourhood, which will be a great convenience to the family; and that she will take in hand to supply us with milk or cream at any hour of the day,”—&c. &c. &c. Thus, it will be observed, neither the spirit of discontent nor the spirit of hope is ever without material for feeding its particular necessities.

You have now got fairly into your new house, bag and baggage. It is after the manner, however, of a certain pound of comfits which a carrier once brought from a city confectioner to a country customer. The paper bag having proved insufficient in the journey, the contents had dispersed themselves throughout all the other packages in the cart. Every parcel, and bag, and box, had to be shaken clear of the lurking carvy, till, the whole of the bulky articles having been discharged and laid off, the little white particles were found at the bottom mingled with straws, fragments of rope, and paper, and all other kinds of trash. The whole having been swept out, however, the honest old carrier brought them to the owner in a large platter, saying, with the air of a man who has relieved his conscience of some uncommon weight, “Here they are, mistress; ye hae them a’ for me.” Just like the comfits are all your goods and chattels—your ox, and your ass, and your children, and your every thing else—the whole are there; but in such a state! Perhaps, to add to your distresses, you have to delay putting the principal rooms to rights till the painters have to be with you. This, of course, adjourns the termination of your agonies _sine die_. Perhaps, about three months after, when you have battled the rascals out of one room into another, much after the manner of the siege of St Sebastian, you get at last into the enviable attitude “as you were,” resolving of course never again to remove as long as you live, but still as ready before next 2d of February to take that step as ever.

FOOTNOTES:

[3] A ceremony in the law of Scotland, by which a man becomes invested with a piece of land or house property.

FALLACIES OF THE YOUNG.

“DEBTORS AND CREDITORS.”