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Updated: June 16, 2025
"No better than them can be," said I to Mr Peevie; "they are likewise both well to do in the world, and should be brought into consequence; and the way o't canna be in better hands than your own. I would, therefore, recommend it to you to see them on the subject, and, if ye find them willing, lay your hairs in the water to bring the business to a bearing."
In one hand he carried a peevie, a big wooden lever with an iron hook on it, such as men use in rolling fir logs. He belabored the pair with it impartially, and it was evident that he was not in the least particular as to whether he hurt them or not. Loosing their hold on each other they staggered to their feet with the red dust thick on their flushed faces. Cassidy flourished the peevie.
"Very true, Mr Peevie," said I, "that's very true; but if his Majesty's government, in this war for all that is dear to us as men and Britons, wish us, who are in authority under them, to pare and save, in order that the means of bringing the war to a happy end may not be wasted, an example must be set, and that example, as a loyal subject and a magistrate, it's my intent so to give, in the hope and confidence of being backed by every person of a right way of thinking."
To this I answered, that no one could suspect me of wishing to push the matter further, provided the thing could be otherwise settled; and therefore, if Mr Plan and Mr Hickery would shake hands, and agree never to notice what had passed to each other, and the other members and magistrates would consent likewise to bury the business in oblivion, I would agree to the balsamic advice of Mr Peevie, and even waive my obligation to bind over the hostile parties to keep the king's peace, so that the whole affair might neither be known nor placed upon record.
"Mr Peevie," said I, when we were cozily seated by ourselves in his little back parlour the mistress having set out the gardevin and tumblers, and the lass brought in the hot water "I do not think, Mr Peevie, that in all my experience, and I am now both an old man and an old magistrate, that I ever saw any thing better managed than the manner in which ye quelled the hobleshow this morning, and therefore we maun hae a little more of your balsamic advice, to make a' heal among us again; and now that I think o't, how has it happent that ye hae never been a bailie?
This Mr Peevie was, in his person, a stumpy man, well advanced in years.
Mr Peevie did not relish this, for in truth it came near his own doors, it having been his annual practice for some years at the Michaelmas dinner to give a sixpence to James Hound, the officer, to see him safe home, and the very time before he had sat so long, that honest James was obligated to cleek and oxter him the whole way; and in the way home, the old man, cagie with what he had gotten, stood in the causey opposite to Mr M'Vest's door, then deacon of the taylors, and trying to snap his fingers, sang like a daft man,
Mr Peevie, one of the very sickerest of all the former sederunts, came to me next morning, in a remonstrating disposition, to enquire what had come over me, and to tell me that every body was much surprised, and many thought it not right of me to break in upon ancient and wonted customs in such a sudden and unconcerted manner.
Mr Plan was likewise a source of great tribulation to me; for he was ever and anon coming forward with some new device, either for ornament or profit, as he said, to the burgh; and no small portion of my time, that might have been more advantageously employed, was wasted in the thriftless consideration of his schemes: all which, with my advanced years, begat in me a sort of distaste to the bickerings of the council chamber; so I conferred and communed with myself, anent the possibility of ruling the town without having recourse to so unwieldy a vehicle as the wheels within wheels of the factions which the Yankee reformator, and that projectile Mr Plan, as he was called by Mr Peevie, had inserted among us.
I swore I would make good agin, an' with that resolve I worked in a lumber camp. With feverish energy I swung the axe an' handled the peevie till my name was known fer miles around. My wages I did not spend, as did most of the men, in gamblin' an' drinkin', an' at last I went to town to send the money to my wife. Then, may God forgive me, I fell.
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