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He sent for the attorney of the village, to whom he had been a good customer; but the lawyer was hunting evidence in another county. The exciseman presented himself as a surety; but he not being an housekeeper, was not accepted. Divers cottagers, who depended on farmer Prickle, were successively refused, because they could not prove that they had paid scot and lot, and parish taxes.
Exciseman Westhouse hath slain Cooper Dick, and it is just that he should die for it; but as to taking this young soldier's life, I'd as soon think of scuttling the saucy Maria, or of mounting the Jolly Roger at her peak.
Suppose you were to imitate the exciseman, mesdames, and even if the souls in purgatory were not greatly bettered, some souls in Creil upon the Oise would find themselves none the worse either here or hereafter.
The exciseman dismounted, groped for the lantern, lit it, and fought his way half down the cliff, at the risk of his life, as the wind had changed and was blowing out to sea. But there was not a sign of the mare and her rider. At the earliest streak of dawn, the two parishes were roused, and long and careful search went on for days. But it was all in vain.
Meanwhile, the farm did not prosper; he had to join to it the salary of an exciseman; at last he had to give it up, and rely altogether on the latter resource.
Though his hopes of preferment were never realised, he tried his best on this slender income 'to make a happy fireside clime to weans and wife, and in a sense succeeded. What he must have felt more keenly than anything else in leaving Ellisland was, that in giving up farming he was making an open confession of failure in his ideal of combining in himself the farmer, the poet, and the exciseman.
The writer has been told, by a gentleman holding a responsible position under our judicial system, that the name of his grandfather the last Kentucky exciseman to this day stands charged on the government-books with thousands of dollars arrears, although he was a man of great courage and not at all likely to be deterred from the discharge of his duty by any ordinary obstacle.
Pipes, who wanted to carry the joke farther than the exciseman dreamt of, laid hold of him in a twinkling, and executed the orders of his commander, notwithstanding all his nods, winking, and significant gestures, which the boatswain's mate would by no means understand; so that he began to repent of the part he acted in this performance, which was like to end so tragically; and stood fastened to the stake, in a very disagreeable state of suspense; casting many a rueful look over his left shoulder, while Pipes was absent in quest of a cat-o'-nine-tails, in expectation of being relieved by the interposition of the lieutenant, who did not, however, appear.
'Had we never loved so kindly, Had we never loved so blindly! Never met or never parted, We had ne'er been broken-hearted. Another song of a different kind, The Deil's awa wi' the Exciseman, had its origin in a raid upon a smuggling brig that had got into shallow water in the Solway.
If Burns had but kept to his plow and his fields, to the birds and the beasts, to the storms and the sunshine! He was a free man while he lived by his labor among his own people! Ambition makes of gentlemen time-servers and paltry politicians; of the plowman-poet it made an exciseman! "What will then become of the leisure you want me to have, Molly?" "Your father will see that you have it!
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