dvantage of the poor
folk, who now get the one or the other, where, in former days, they
would have been thankful for a farthing; and yet, for all that, there is
a visible increase in the number of beggars, a thing which I cannot
understand, and far less thankfulness on their part than of old, when
alms were given with a scantier hand; but this, no doubt, comes of the
spreading wickedness of the times. Don't you think so, sir? It's a
mystery that I cannot fathom, for there was never a more evident passion
for church-building than at present; but I doubt there is great truth in
the old saying, "The nearer the kirk, the farther from grace," which was
well exemplified in the case of Provost Pedigree of our town, a decent
man in his externals, and he keepit a hardware shop; he was indeed a
merchant of "a' things," from a needle and a thimble down to a rattle
and a spade. Poor man! he ran at last a ram-race, and was taken before
the session; but I had always a jealousy of him, for he used to say very
comical things to me in the doctor's lifetime; not that I gave him any
encouragement farther than in the way of an innocent joke, for he was a
jocose and jocular man, but he never got the better of that exploit with
the session, and dwining away, died the year following of a decay, a
disease for which my dear deceased husband used to say no satisfactory
remedy exists in nature, except gentle laxatives, before it has taken
root: but although I have been the wife of a doctor, and spent the best
part of my life in the smell of drugs, I cannot say that I approve of
them, except in a case of necessity, where, to be sure, they must be
taken, if we intend the doctor's skill to take effect upon us; but many
a word me and my dear deceased husband had about my taking of his pills,
after my long affliction with the hypochondriacal affection, for I could
never swallow them, but always gave them a check between the teeth, and
their taste was so odious that I could not help spitting them out. It is
indeed a great pity, that the Faculty cannot make their nostrums more
palatable, and I used to tell the doctor, when he was making up doses
for his patients, that I wondered how he could expect sick folk, unable
to swallow savoury food, would ever take his nauseous medicines, which
he never could abide to hear, for he had great confidence in many of his
prescriptions, especially a bolus of flour of brimstone and treacle for
the cold, one of the few o