time--a character
not too entirely engrossed by business, always ready for a frolic, a
song, a decorous bout of drinking, and known in all the haunts of the
cheerful townsmen: tolerant in morals yet always respectable, fond of
gossip, fond of fun, and if not fond of money yet judiciously disposed
to gain as much as he could make, or as his apprentices and careful wife
could make for him: and gradually progressing from a smaller to a larger
shop, from a less to a more "genteel" business, and finally to a
comfortable retirement.

In such a life there was plenty of room for enjoyment, for relaxation,
and no want of leisure to tell a good story or compose a string of
couplets where that gift existed, even when most busy. We may imagine
that he did not sit much at his block, but rather in the front of the
shop amusing his customers, while their periwigs were curled or fitted,
with Edinburgh gossip and wit in the familiarity of common citizenship,
or with anecdotes which enlightened the country gentlemen, especially
those from the west, the last _bon mot_ of the Parliament House, or the
Lord Advocate's latest deliverance. And his clubs were as numerous as
those of a young man of fashion. The "Easy Club" was composed of "young
anti-unionists," which indicates the politics which the wigmaker mildly
held in cheerful subjection to the powers that were. No doubt he would
have gone to the death (in verse) for the privileges of Edinburgh: but
the anti-unionism or sentimental Jacobitism of his class was not of a
kind to trouble any Government. And except the question of the Union,
which was settled early in his career, politics do not seem to have been
of an exciting character in Edinburgh. Local matters, always the most
interesting of any to the inhabitants of a town not great enough to be
cosmopolitan but full of distinct and striking individuality, furnished
the poetical wigmaker with his first themes. It would seem that he only
learned to rhyme from the necessity of taking his part in the high jinks
of the club; at least all his early productions were intended for its
diversion. An "Elegy on Maggie Johnstone," mistress of a convenient
"public" at Morningside, then described as "a mile and a half west from
Edinburgh," a suburb on "the south side," though now a part of the
town--which would lie in the way of the members when they took their
walks abroad, and no doubt formed the end of many a Sabbath day's
ramble--was almost the fi