ckoned it best to article him for a twelvemonth
with Ebenezer Packwood at the corner, before finally sending him off to
Edinburgh, to get his finishing in the wig, false-curl, and hair-baking
department, under Urquhart, Maclachlan, or Connal. Accordingly, I sent
for Eben to come and eat an egg with me--matters were entered upon and
arranged--Benjie was sent on trial; and though at first he funked and
fought refractory, he came, to the astonishment of his master and the old
apprentice, in less than no time to cut hair without many visible
shear-marks; and, within the first quarter, succeeded, without so much as
drawing blood, to unbristle for a wager of his master's, the Saturday
night's countenance of Daniel Shoebrush himself, who was as rough as a
badger.

Having thus done for Benjie, it now behoved me to have an eye towards
myself; for, having turned the corner of manhood, I found that I was
beginning to be wearing away down the hillside of life. Customers, who
had as much faith in me as almost in their Bible with regard to
everything connected with my own department, and who could depend on
their cloth being cut according to the newest and most approved fashions,
began now and then to return a coat upon my hand for alteration, as being
quite out of date; while my daily work, to which in the days of other
years I had got up blythe as the lark, instead of being a pleasure, came
to be looked forward to with trouble and anxiety, weighing on my heart as
a care, and on my shoulders as a burden.

Finding but too severely that such was the case, and that there is no
contending with the course of nature, I took sweet counsel together with
James Batter over a cup of tea and a cookie, concerning what it was best
for a man placed in my circumstances to betake myself to.

As industry ever has its own reward, let me without brag or boasting be
allowed to state, that in my own case, it did not disappoint my
exertions. I had sat down a tenant, and I was now not only the landlord
of my own house and shop, but of all the back tenements to the head of
the garden, as also of the row of one-story houses behind, facing to the
loan, in the centre of which Lucky Thamson keeps up the sign of the
Tankard and Tappit Hen. It was also a relief to my mind, as the head of
my family, that we had cut Benjie loose from his mother's apron string,
poor fellow, and set him adrift in an honest way of doing to buffet the
stormy ocean of life; so, ev