I loved
David, not only because he was a good man, but because there was a great
deal of _character_ or _originality_ about him; and though his brow was
cheerful, the clouds of sorrow had frequently rested upon it. More than
once when seated by his parlour fire, and when he had finished his pipe,
and his afternoon tumbler stood on the table beside him, I have heard
him give the following account of the ups and downs--the trials, the
joys, and sorrows--which he had encountered in his worldly pilgrimage;
and, to preserve the interest of the history, I shall give it in David's
own idiom, and in his own words.
"I ne'er was a great traveller," David was wont to begin: "through the
length o' Edinburgh, and as far south as Newcastle, is a' that my legs
ken about geography. But I've had a good deal o' crooks and thraws, and
ups and downs, in the world for a' that. My faither was in the droving
line, and lived in the parish o' Coldstream. He did a good deal o'
business, baith about the fairs on the Borders, at Edinburgh market
every week, and sometimes at Morpeth. He was a bachelor till he was
five-and-forty, and he had a very decent lass keep'd his house, they
ca'd Kirsty Simson. Kirsty was a remarkably weel-faur'd woman, and a
number o' the farm lads round about used to come and see her, as weel as
trades' chields frae about Coldstream and Birgham--no that she gied them
ony encouragement, but that it was her misfortune to hae a gude-looking
face.
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