a perfect shame to be seen. At
Dalkeith, where one is well known, anything may pass; but I was always in
bodily terror, that, had he gone to Edinburgh, he would have been taken
up by the police, on suspicion of being either a Spanish pawtriot or a
highway robber.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE--CATCHING A PHILISTINE IN THE COAL-HOLE

Years wore on after the departure and death of poor Mungo Glen, during
the which I had a sowd of prentices, good, bad, and indifferent, and who
afterwards cut, and are cutting, a variety of figures in the world.
Sometimes I had two or three at a time; for the increase of business that
flowed in upon me with a full stream was tremendous, enabling me--who say
it that should not say it--to lay by a wheen bawbees for a sore head, or
the frailties of old age. Somehow or other, the clothes made on my
shopboard came into great vogue through all Dalkeith, both for neatness
of shape and nicety of workmanship; and the young journeymen of other
masters did not think themselves perfected, or worthy a decent wage, till
they had crooked their houghs for three months in my service. With
regard to myself, some of my acquaintances told me, that if I had gone
into Edinburgh to push my fortune, I could have cut half the trade out of
bread, and maybe risen, in the course of nature, to be Lord Provost
himself; but I just heard them speak, and kept my wheisht. I never was
overly ambitious; and I remembered how proud Nebuchadnaazer ended with
eating grass on all-fours. Every man has a right to be the best judge of
his own private matters; though, to be sure, the advice of a true friend
is often more precious than rubies, and sweeter than the Balm of Gilead.

It was about the month of March, in the year of grace _anno Domini_
eighteen hundred, that the whole country trembled, like a giant ill of
the ague, under the consternation of Buonaparte, and all the French
vagabonds emigrating over, and landing in the Firth. Keep us all! the
folk, doitit bodies, put less confidence than became them in what our
volunteer regiments were able and willing to do; yet we had a remnant
among us of the true blood, that with loud laughter laughed the creatures
to scorn; and I, for one, kept up my pluck, like a true Highlander. Does
any living soul believe that Scotland--the land of the Tweed, and the
Clyde, and the Tay--could be conquered, and the like of us sold, like
Egyptian slaves, into captivity? Fie, fie--I despise such