pea, demanding of Mr M'Queerie an explanation of what he
meant by the insinuation. It was with great difficulty that I got him
pacified; but unfortunately the joke was oure good to be forgotten, and
when it was afterwards spread abroad, as it happened to take its birth in
my house, it was laid to my charge, and many a time was I obligated to
tell all about it, and how it couldna be meant for me, but had been
incurred by Bailie Pirlet's conceit of spinning out long perjink
speeches.

CHAPTER XXXII--THE TOWN DRUMMER

Nor did I get every thing my own way, for I was often thwarted in matters
of small account, and suffered from them greater disturbance and
molestation than things of such little moment ought to have been allowed
to produce within me; and I do not think that any thing happened in the
whole course of my public life, which gave me more vexation than what I
felt in the last week of my second provostry.

For many a year, one Robin Boss had been town drummer; he was a relic of
some American-war fencibles, and was, to say the God's truth of him, a
divor body, with no manner of conduct, saving a very earnest endeavour to
fill himself fou as often as he could get the means; the consequence of
which was, that his face was as plooky as a curran' bun, and his nose as
red as a partan's tae.

One afternoon there was a need to send out a proclamation to abolish a
practice that was growing into a custom, in some of the bye parts of the
town, of keeping swine at large--ordering them to be confined in proper
styes, and other suitable places. As on all occasions when the matter to
be proclaimed was from the magistrates, Thomas, on this, was attended by
the town-officers in their Sunday garbs, and with their halberts in their
hands; but the abominable and irreverent creature was so drunk, that he
wamblet to and fro over the drum, as if there had not been a bane in his
body. He was seemingly as soople and as senseless as a bolster.--Still,
as this was no new thing with him, it might have passed; for James Hound,
the senior officer, was in the practice, when Robin was in that state, of
reading the proclamations himself.--On this occasion, however, James
happened to be absent on some hue and cry quest, and another of the
officers (I forget which) was appointed to perform for him. Robin,
accustomed to James, no sooner heard the other man begin to read, than he
began to curse and swear at him as an incapable nincompoop