--and the calling out of
the volunteers,--and divers sea-fights at Camperdown and elsewhere,--and
land battles countless,--and the American war, part o't,--and awful
murders,--and mock fights in the Duke's Parks,--and highway
robberies,--and breakings of all the Ten Commandments, from the first to
the last; so that, allowing me to have had but a common spunk of
reflection, I must, like others, have cast a wistful eye on the ongoings
of men: and, if I had not strength to pour out my inward lamentations, I
could not help thinking, with fear and trembling, at the rebellion of
such a worm as man, against a Power whose smallest word could extinguish
his existence, and blot him out in a twinkling from the roll of living
things.

But, if I was much affected, the callant Mungo was a great deal more.
From the days in which he had lain in his cradle, he had been brought up
in a remote and quiet part of the country, far from the bustling of
towns, and from man encountering man in the stramash of daily life; so
that his heart seemed to pine within him like a flower, for want of the
blessed morning dew; and, like a bird that has been catched in a girn
among the winter snows, his appetite failed him, and he fell away from
his meat and his clothes.

I was vexed exceedingly to see the callant in this dilemmy, for he was
growing very tall and thin, his chaft-blades being lank and white, and
his eyes of a hollow drumliness, as if he got no refreshment from the
slumbers of the night. Beholding all this work of destruction going on
in silence, I spoke to his friend Mrs Grassie about him, and she was so
motherly as to offer to have a glass of port-wine, stirred with best
jesuit's barks, ready for him every forenoon at twelve o'clock; for
really nobody could be but interested in the laddie, he was so gentle and
modest, making never a word of complaint, though melting like snow off a
dyke; and, though he must have suffered both in body and mind, enduring
all with a silent composure, worthy of a holy martyr.

Perceiving things going on from bad to worse, I thought it was best to
break the matter to him, as he was never like to speak himself; and I
asked him in a friendly way, as we were sitting together on the board
finishing a pair of fustian overalls for Maister Bob Bustle--a riding
clerk for one of the Edinburgh spirit shops, but who liked aye to have
his clothes of the Dalkeith cut, having been born, bred, and educated in
our town, lik