and date, for better for worse, he prosecuted
to the hour of his death:--I should rather have said to within a
fortnight of it, for he lay for that time in the mortal fever, that cut
through the thread of his existence. Alas! as Job says, "How time flies
like a weaver's shuttle!"

He was a tall, thin, lowering man, blackaviced, and something in the
physog like myself, though scarcely so weel-faured; with a kind of
blueness about his chin, as if his beard grew of that colour--which I
scarcely think it would do--but might arise either from the dust of the
blue cloth, constantly flying about the shop, taking a rest there, or
from his having a custom of giving it a rub now and then with his finger
and thumb, both of which were dyed of that colour, as well as his apron,
from rubbing against, and handling the webs of checkit claith in the
loom.

Ill would it become me, I trust a dutiful son, to say that my father was
any thing but a decent, industrious, hard-working man, doing every thing
for the good of his family, and winning the respect of all that knew the
value of his worth. As to his decency, few--very few indeed--laid
beneath the mools of Dalkeith kirk-yard, made their beds there, leaving a
better name behind them; and as to industry, it is but little to say that
he toiled the very flesh off his bones, driving the shuttle from Monday
morning till Saturday night, from the rising up of the sun, even to the
going down thereof; and whiles, when opportunity led him, or occasion
required, digging and delving away at the bit kail-yard, till moon and
stars were in the lift, and the dews of heaven that fell on his head,
were like the oil that flowed from Aaron's beard, even to the skirts of
his garment. But what will ye say there? Some are born with a silver
spoon in their mouths, and others with a parritch-stick. Of the latter
was my father; for, with all his fechting, he never was able much more
than to keep our heads above the ocean of debt. Whatever was denied him,
a kind Providence, howsoever, enabled him to do that; and so he departed
this life contented, leaving to my mother and me, the two survivors, the
prideful remembrance of being, respectively, she the widow, and me the
son, of an honest man. Some left with twenty thousand cannot boast as
much; so every one has their comforts.

Having never entered much into public life, further than attending the
kirk twice every Sabbath--and thrice when there was evening