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Updated: June 14, 2025
Balwhidder had a genius for management, and started a dairy, and set the servant lassies to spin wool for making blankets and lint for sheets and napery. She sent the butter on market days to Irville, her cheese and huxtry to Glasgow. We were just coining money, in so much that, after the first year, we had the whole tot of stipend to put into the bank.
A meeting of the session was forthwith held; for here was Thomas Wilson's wife and all his weans, an awful cess, thrown upon the parish; and it was settled outright among us, that Mr Docken, who was then an elder, but is since dead, a worthy man, with a soft tongue and a pleasing manner, should go to Irville, and get Thomas, if possible, released from the recruiters.
About the month of February, a recruiting party came to our neighbour town of Irville, to beat up for men to be soldiers against the rebels; and thus the battle was brought, as it were, to our gates; for the very first man that took on with them was one Thomas Wilson, a cottar in our clachan, who, up to that time, had been a decent and creditable character.
I went with him to the door with the candle in my hand it was a clear frosty night, with a sharp wind; and the moment I opened the door, the blast blew out the candle, so that I heedlessly, with the candlestick in my hand, walked with him to the yett without my hat, by which I took a sore cold in my head, that brought on a dreadful toothache; insomuch, that I was obligated to go into Irville to get the tooth drawn, and this caused my face to swell to such a fright, that, on the Sabbath-day, I could not preach to my people.
However, married we were, and we hired the Irville chaise, and with Miss Jenny her sister, and Becky Cairns her niece, who sat on a portmanty at our feet, we went on a pleasure jaunt to Glasgow, where we bought a miracle of useful things for the manse, that neither the first Mrs Balwhidder nor me ever thought of; but the second Mrs Balwhidder that was, had a geni for management, and it was extraordinary what she could go through.
In short, things grew to a perfect hostility, for a swarm of weans came out from the schools of Irville on a Saturday afternoon, and, forgathering with ours, they had a battle with stones on the toll-road, such as was dreadful to hear of; for many a one got a mark that day he will take to the grave with him.
On the Monday morning, when Charlie was to go away to meet the Irville carrier on the road, we were all up, and I walked by myself from the manse into the clachan to bid him farewell, and I met him just coming from his mother's door, as blithe as a bee, in his sailor's dress, with a stick, and a bundle tied in a Barcelona silk handkerchief hanging o'er his shoulder, and his two little brothers were with him, and his sisters, Kate and Effie, looking out from the door all begreeten; but his mother was in the house, praying to the Lord to protect her orphan, as she afterwards told me.
After sighting the steamer, I hoisted the demand for the barque, when she hoisted the American flag, which I reported to the Port Office, the barque then being about eight miles off the land from Irville Point. No sooner had the barque hoisted the American flag than the steamer turned sharp round in the direction of and towards the barque.
Upon which Betty jumpet up quite recovered, and Jenny fell to the wailing and railing, while the hostler from the east country took the bed of tea on his back, to carry it to the change-house, till a cart was gotten to take it into the custom-house at Irville.
In the month of October, when the corn was yet in the holms, and on the cold land by the river side, the water of Irville swelled to a great spait, from bank to brae, sweeping all before it, and roaring, in its might, like an agent of divine displeasure, sent forth to punish the inhabitants of the earth.
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