whiles, for holding forth in some
bit country kirk, to a wheen shepherds and their dogs, when the minister
himself, staring with the fat of good living and little work, is lying
ill of a bile fever, or has the gout in his muckle toe, yet he has aye
the miseries of uncertainty to encounter; his coat grows bare in the
cuffs, greasy in the neck, and brown between the shouthers; his jawbones
get long and lank, his een sunk, and his head grey wi' vexation, and what
the wise Solomon calls 'hope deferred;' so at long and last, friendless
and penniless, he takes the incurable complaint of a broken heart, and is
buried out of the gate, in some bit strange corner of the kirkyard."

"Stop, stop, gudeman," cried Nanse, half greeting, "that's an awfu'
business; but I daresay it's owre true. But mightna we breed him a
doctor? It seems they have unco profits; and, as he's sae clever, he
might come to be a graduit."

"Doctor!" answered I--"Keh, keh, let that flee stick i' the wa'; it's a'
ye ken about it. If ye was only aware of what doctors had to do and see,
between dwining weans and crying wives, ye would have thought twice
before ye let that out. How do ye think our callant has a heart within
him to look at folk blooding like sheep, or to sew up cutted throats with
a silver needle and silk thread, as I would stitch a pair of trowsers; or
to trepan out pieces of cloured skulls, filling up the hole with an iron
plate; and pull teeth, maybe the only ones left, out of auld women's
heads, and so on, to say nothing of rampauging with dark lanterns and
double-tweel dreadnoughts, about gousty kirkyards, among humlock and long
nettles, the haill night over, like spunkie--shoving the dead corpses,
winding-sheets and all, into corn-sacks, and boiling their bones, after
they have dissected all the red flesh off them, into a big caudron, to
get out the marrow to make drogs of?"

"Eh, stop, stop, Mansie!" cried Nanse holding up her hands.

"Na," continued I, "but it's a true bill--it's as true as ye are sitting
there. And do ye think that any earthly compensation, either gowpins of
gowd by way of fees, or yellow chariots to ride in, with a black servant
sticking up behind, like a sign over a tobacconist's door, can ever make
up for the loss of a man's having all his feelings seared to iron, and
his soul made into whinstone, yea, into the nether-millstone, by being
art and part in sic dark and devilish abominations? Go away wi' siccan
do