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Since then this great Place has become more majestic, as well as more open, by the clearing away of the Luckenbooths: but nothing can be finer than the touch of the graphic yet reticent pencil which sets down before us the glimmering of the irregular lights which seemed at last to twinkle in the middle sky.
As my grandfather, in the grey of the morning, was waiting in the Canongate till the worship was over in the house of the Lord James Stuart, he frequently rode up and down the street as far the Luckenbooths and the Abbey's sanctuary siver, and his mind was at times smitten with the remorse of pity when he saw, as the dawn advanced, the numbers of poor labouring men that came up out of the closes and gathered round the trone, abiding there to see who would come to hire them for the day.
No other drum but theirs was allowed to sound on the High Street between the Luckenbooths and the Netherbow. Poor Fergusson, whose irregularities sometimes led him into unpleasant rencontres with these military conservators of public order, and who mentions them so often that he may be termed their poet laureate,* thus admonishes his readers, warned doubtless by his own experience:
Giles's Church, running downhill to the Cowgate and covering the site of the present Parliament House. It has disappeared as utterly as the prison or the Luckenbooths; and for those ignorant of its history, I know only one token that remains.
Omitting much formal phraseology, and many legal details, I will endeavour to give you, in exchange for your fiddler's tale, the history of a litigant, or rather, the history of his lawsuit. 'Peter Peebles and Paul Plainstanes, said my father, entered into partnership, in the year , as mercers and linendrapers, in the Luckenbooths, and carried on a great line of business to mutual advantage.
'I would propose to you, continued the Baron,'to walk as far as my quarters in the Luckenbooths, and to admire in your passage the High Street, whilk is, beyond a shadow of dubitation, finer than any street whether in London or Paris.
Those who know my grandmother do not need to be told that she took possession of our house and all that was therein, of Irma so completely that practically I was only allowed to bid my wife "Good-morning" under the strictest supervision, and of Mistress Pathrick who, after one sole taste of my grandmother's tongue, had retired defeated with the muttered criticism that "that tongue o' the auld leddy's could ding a' the Luckenbooths aye, and the West Bow as weel."
By this time probably Ramsay had removed his shop to the end of the Luckenbooths, which faced "east" to the unencumbered portion of the High Street, where the City Cross stood, and where all the notable persons made their daily promenade.
Besides, I ought to recollect, and, Darsie, I do recollect, that my father upon various occasions, has shown that he can be indulgent as well as strict. The leaving his old apartments in the Luckenbooths was to him like divorcing the soul from the body; yet Dr.
Germains; yonder mettle beauty sailed along on her high-heeled shoes to finish the night's triumph at an oyster supper in a den behind the Luckenbooths. And there again walked an imperial dowager, who still span her own linen and struck her serving-man with her ivory cane.
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