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No occasion or cause, however, had come to pass by which this inherent cross-grainedness was stirred into action, till the affair of reseating the kirk a measure, as I have mentioned, which gave the best satisfaction; but it happened that, on a Saturday night, as I was going soberly home from a meeting of the magistrates in the clerk's chamber, I by chance recollected that I stood in need of having my box replenished; and accordingly, in the most innocent and harmless manner that it was possible for a man to do, I stepped into this Mr Smeddum, the tobacconist's shop, and while he was compounding my mixture from the two canisters that stood on his counter, and I was in a manner doing nothing but looking at the number of counterfeit sixpences and shillings that were nailed thereon as an admonishment to his customers, he said to me, "So, provost, we're to hae a new lining to the kirk.
The deacon's wife well knew the great stake she had on that occasion in the boyne, and was for a season demented with the thought; but at last summoning her three daughters, and borrowing our lass, and Mr Smeddum the tobacconist's niece, she went to the green, and got everything safely housed, yet still Jeanie Tirlet never made her appearance.
But when the dominie had left me, I considered with myself, and having long before then observed that our hopes, when realized, are always light in the grain, and our fears, when come to pass, less than they seemed as seen through the mists of time and distance, I resolved with myself to sit still with my eyes open, watching and saying nothing; and it was well that I deported myself so prudently; for when the first number of the paper made its appearance, it was as poor a job as ever was "open to all parties, and influenced by none;" and it required but two eyes to discern that there was no need of any strong power from the lord advocate to suppress or abolish the undertaking; for there was neither birr nor smeddum enough in it to molest the high or to pleasure the low; so being left to itself, and not ennobled by any prosecution, as the schemers expected, it became as foisonless as the "London Gazette" on ordinary occasions.
As nervous hypochondriac, as would-be swaggerer, as a dullard requiring stimulus, he found that drink, to use his own language, gave him "smeddum." With his second year he began the study of philosophy, and that added to his woes.
That limb of the law discerning a sediment of litigation in the case, eggit on Mr Smeddum into a persuasion that the seating of the kirk was a thing which the magistrates had no legal authority to undertake. At this critical moment, my ancient adversary and seeming friend, the dean of guild, happened to pass the door, and the bickering snuff-man seeing him, cried to him to come in.
A most reasonable man in all things he was, and in no concern of my own had I a better satisfaction than in the house he built for me at the conjuncture when he had the town's work in the kirk; but there was at that period among us a certain person, of the name of Nabal Smeddum, a tobacconist by calling, who, up to this season, had been regarded but as a droll and comical body at a coothy crack.
"Good! surely, provost, ye hae na had an inspection; they're crackit in divers places; they're shotten out wi' infirmity in others. In short, the whole kirk, frae the coping to the fundament, is a fabric smitten wi' a paralytic." "It's very extraordinar, Mr Smeddum," was my reply, "that nobody has seen a' this but yoursel'."
"Ay, he's in," says I; "but you shud mind an' gie fowk their richt names when ye're seeking them. Ye micht hae smeddum enough to say Mester Bowden, or Alexander Bowden. Your teacher michta tell't ye that." I gaed awa' doon the yaird to get Sandy, an' juist as I was gaen oot at the back door I heard ane o' the sackets sayin', "What's she chatterin' aboot?
"The Howff?" said Gourlay. "Yes," said Logan; "haven't ye heard o't? It's a snug bit house where some of the West Country billies forgather for a nicht at e'en. Oh, nothing to speak of, ye know just a dram and a joke to pass the time now and then!" "Aha!" laughed Gourlay, "there's worse than a drink, by Jove. It puts smeddum in your blood!"
Mr Smeddum, as I have related, was in some estimation for his comicality; but he was a dure hand at an argument, and would not see the plainest truth when it was not on his side of the debate.
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