lad that was to be married the week
after to a servant-maid of Maister Wiggie's,--a trig quean, that
afterwards made him a good wife, and the father of a numerous small
family.

Speaking of nankeen, I would advise every one, as a friend, to buy the
Indian, and not the British kind--the expense of outlay being ill hained,
even at sixpence a yard--the latter not standing the washing, but making
a man's legs, at a distance, look like a yellow yorline.

It behoved me now as a maister, bent on the improvement of his prentice,
to commence learning Mungo some few of the mysteries of our trade; so
having showed him the way to crook his hough (example is better than
precept, as James Batter observes), I taught him the plan of holding the
needle; and having fitted his middle-finger with a bottomless thimble of
our own sort, I set him to sewing the cotton-lining into one leg, knowing
that it was a part not very particular, and not very likely to be seen;
so that the matter was not great, whether the stitching was exactly
regular, or rather in the _zigzag_ line. As is customary with all new
beginners, he made a desperate awkward hand at it, and of which I would
of course have said nothing, but that he chanced to brog his thumb, and
completely soiled the whole piece of work with the stains of blood;
which, for one thing, could not wash out without being seen; and, for
another, was an unlucky omen to happen to a marriage garment.

Every man should be on his guard; this was a lesson I learned when I was
in the volunteers, at the time Buonaparte was expected to land down at
Dunbar. Luckily for me in this case, I had, by some foolish mistake or
another, made an allowance of a half yard, over and above what I found I
could manage to shape on; so I boldly made up my mind to cut out the
piece altogether, it being in the back seam. In that business I trust I
showed the art of a good tradesman, having managed to do it so neatly
that it could not be noticed without the narrowest inspection; and having
the advantage of a covering by the coat-flaps, had indeed no chance of
being so, except on desperately windy days.

In the week succeeding that on which this unlucky mischance happened, an
accident almost as bad befell, though not to me, further than that
everyone is bound by the Ten Commandments, to say nothing of his own
conscience, to take a part in the afflictions that befall their
door-neighbours.

When the voice of man was wheisht