been cut off from the face of the
earth, root and branch. Nevertheless, as I have taken occasion to make
observation, the foundations of the cutting and shaving line are as sure
as that of the everlasting rocks; beards being likely to roughen, and
heads to require polling, as long as wood grows and water runs.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN--"PUGGIE, PUGGIE"--A STORY WITHOUT A TAIL

The welfare of the human race and the improvement of society being my
chief aim, in this record of my sayings and doings through the pilgrimage
of life, I make bold at the instigation of Nanse, my worthy wife, to
record in black and white a remarkably curious thing, to which I was an
eye-witness in the course of nature. I have little reluctance to
consent, not only because the affair was not a little striking in
itself--as the reader will soon see--but because, like AEsop's Fables, it
bears a good moral at the end of it.

Many a time have I thought of the business alluded to, which happened to
take place in our fore-shop one bonny summer afternoon, when I was
selling a coallier wife, from the Marquis of Lothian's upper hill, a yard
of serge at our counter-side. At the time she came in, although busied
in reading an account of one of Buonaparte's battles in the Courant
newspaper, I observed at her foot a bonny wee doggie, with a bushy black
tail, of the dancing breed--that could sit on its hind-legs like a
squirrel, cast biscuit from its nose, and play a thousand other most
diverting tricks. Well, as I was saying, I saw the woman had a pride in
the bit creature--it was just a curiosity like--and had belonged to a
neighbour's son that volunteered out of the Berwickshire militia (the
Birses, as they were called), into a regiment that was draughted away
into Egypt, Malta, or the East Indies, I believe--so, it seems, the lad's
father and mother thought much more about it, for the sake of him that
was off and away--being to their fond eyes a remembrancer, and to their
parental hearts a sort of living keepsake.

After bargaining about the serge--and taking two or three other things,
such as a leather-cap edged with rabbit-fur for her little nevoy--a dozen
of plated buttons for her goodman's new waistcoat, which was making up at
Bonnyrig by Nicky Sharpshears, my old apprentice--and a spotted silk
napkin for her own Sunday neck wear--I tied up the soft articles with
grey paper and skinie, and was handing over the odd bawbees of change,
when, j