CHAPTER I.

“And a little child shall lead them.”

“Wee Davie” was the only child of William Thorburn, blacksmith. The child had reached the age in which he could venture, with prudence and reflection, on a journey from one chair to another, his wits kept alive by maternal warnings of “Tak’ care, Davie; mind the fire, Davie.” And when his journey was ended in safety, and he looked over his shoulder with a cry of joy to his mother, he was rewarded, in addition to the rewards of his own brave and adventurous spirit, by such a smile as equalled only his own, and by the well-merited approval of “Weel done, Davie!”

Davie was the most powerful and influential member of the household. Neither the British fleet, nor the French army, nor the Armstrong gun, nor the British Constitution had the power of doing what Davie did. They might as well have tried to make a primrose grow or a lark sing! He was, for example, a wonderful stimulus to labour. His father, the smith, had been rather disposed to idleness before his son’s arrival. He did not take to his work on cold mornings as he might have done, and was apt to neglect many opportunities which offered themselves of bettering his condition; and Jeanie was easily put off by some plausible objection when she urged her husband to make an additional honest penny to keep the house. But “the bairn” became a new motive to exertion; and the thought of leaving him and Jeanie more comfortable, in case sickness laid the smith aside, or death took him away, became like a new sinew to his powerful arm, as he wielded the hammer, and made it ring the music of hearty work on the sounding anvil. The meaning of benefit-clubs, sick-societies, and penny-banks was fully explained by “wee Davie.”

Davie also exercised a remarkable influence on his father’s political views and social habits. The smith had been fond of debates on political questions, and no more sonorous growl of discontent than his could be heard against the powers that be, the injustice done to the masses, and the misery which was occasioned by class legislation. He had also made up his mind not to be happy or contented, but only to endure life as a necessity laid upon him, until the required reforms in Church and State, at home and abroad, had been attained.

But his wife, without uttering a syllable on matters which she did not pretend even to understand, and by a series of acts _out_ of Parliament, by reforms in household arrangements, by introducing good _bills_ to her own House of Commons, and by a charter, whose points were chiefly very commonplace ones, such as a comfortable meal, a tidy home, a clean fireside, a polished grate, above all, a cheerful countenance and womanly love――these _radical_ changes had made her husband wonderfully fond of his own house. He was, under this teaching, getting every day too contented for a patriot, and too happy for a man in such an ill-governed world. His old companions could not at last coax him out at night. He was lost as a member of one of the most philosophical clubs in the neighbourhood. His old pluck, they said, was gone. The wife, it was alleged by the patriotic bachelors, had “cowed” him, and driven all the spirit out of him. But “wee Davie” completed this revolution.

One failing of William’s had hitherto resisted Jeanie’s silent influence. The smith had formed the habit, before he was married, of meeting a few companions, “just in a friendly way,” on pay-nights at a public-house. It was true that he was never “what might be called a drunkard,” “never lost a day’s work,” “never was the worse of liquor,” etc. But, nevertheless, when he entered the snuggery in Peter Wilson’s whisky shop, with the blazing fire and comfortable atmosphere; and when, with half a dozen talkative and, to him, pleasant fellows and old companions, he sat round the fire, and the glass circulated, and the gossip of the week was discussed, and racy stories were told, and one or two songs sung, linked together by memories of old merry meetings; and current jokes were repeated, with humour, of the tyrannical influence which some would presume to exercise on “innocent social enjoyment”――then would the smith’s brawny chest expand, and his face beam, and his feelings become malleable, and his sixpences begin to melt, and flow out in generous sympathy into Peter Wilson’s fozy hand, and there counted beneath his sodden eyes. And so it was that the smith’s wages were always _minus_ Peter’s gains.

His wife had her fears――her horrid anticipations――but did not like to “even” her husband to anything so dreadful as what she in her heart dreaded. She took her own way, however, to win him to the house and to good, and gently insinuated wishes rather than expressed them. The smith, no doubt, was only “merry,” and never was ill-tempered or unkind; “yet at times――” “and then, what if――” Yes, Jeanie, you are right! The demon sneaks into the house by degrees, and at first may be dispelled, and the door shut upon him; but let him only once take possession, then he will keep it, and shut the door against everything pure, and lovely, and of good report, and bar it against thee and “wee Davie,” ay, and against better than thee and than all else, and fill the house with sin and shame, with misery and despair! But “wee Davie,” with his arm of might, drove the demon out.

It happened thus. One evening when the smith returned home so that “you would know _it_ on him,” his child toddled to him, and, lifting him up, he made him stand before him on his knee. The child began to play with the locks of the Samson, and to pat him on the cheek, and to repeat with glee the name of “dad-a.” The smith gazed at him intently, and with a peculiar look of love, mingled with sadness.

“Isn’t he a bonnie bit bairn?” asked Jeanie, as she looked over her husband’s shoulder at the child, nodding and smiling to him.

The smith spoke not a word, but gazed still upon his boy, while some sudden emotion was strongly working in his countenance. “It’s done!” he at last said, as he put his child down.

“What’s wrang? what’s wrang?” exclaimed his wife, as she stood before him, and put her hands round his shoulders, bending down until her face was close to his.

“Everything is wrang, Jeanie!”

“Willie, what is’t? are ye no’ weel?――tell me what’s wrang wi’ you?――oh, tell me!” she exclaimed in evident alarm.

“It’s a’ richt noo!” he said, rising up, and seizing his child, lifted him up to his breast, and kissed him. He then folded him in his arms, clasped him to his heart, and looking up in silence, said, “Davie has done it, along wi’ you, Jeanie. Thank God, I am a free man!”

His wife felt awed, she knew not how.

“Sit doon,” he said, as he took out his handkerchief and wiped away a tear from his eye, “and I’ll tell you a’ aboot it.”

Jeanie sat on a stool at his feet, with Davie on her knee.

Her husband seized his child’s little hand with one of his own, and with the other took his wife’s. “I havena been what ye may ca’ a drunkard,” he said, “but I hae been often as I shouldna hae been, and as, wi’ God’s help, I never, never will be again!”

“Oh!” exclaimed Jeanie.

“Let me speak,” said William. “To think, Jeanie”――here he struggled as if something was choking him――“to think that for whisky I might beggar you and wee Davie; tak’ the claes aff your back; drive ye to the workhouse; break your heart; and ruin my bonnie bairn, that loves me sae weel, in saul and body, for time and for eternity! God forgie me! I canna stand the thocht o’t, let alane the reality!” and the strong man rose, and little accustomed as he was to show his feelings, he kissed his wife and child. “It’s done, it’s done!” he said; “dinna greet, Jeanie. Thank God for you and Davie, my best blessings.”

“Except Himsel’!” said Jeanie, as she hung on her husband’s neck.

“Amen!” said the smith; “and noo, woman, nae mair aboot it; it’s done. Gie wee Davie a piece, and get the supper ready.”

“Wee Davie” was also a great promoter of social intercourse, an unconscious link between man and man, and a great practical “unionist.” He healed breaches, reconciled differences, and was a peace-maker between kinsfolk and neighbours. For example: Jeanie’s parents were rather opposed to her marriage with the smith; some said because they belonged to the rural aristocracy of country farmers. They regretted, therefore, the day――though their regret was expressed only to old friends――when the lame condition of some of the horses had brought Thorburn into communion with their stable, and ultimately with their house. Thorburn was admitted to be a sensible, well-to-do man; but then he was, at best, but a smith, and Jeanie was good-looking, and “by ordinary,” with expectations of some “tocher,” and as her mother remarked, “though I say it, that shouldna say it,” etc., and so, with this introduction, she would proceed to enlarge on Jeanie’s excellences, commenting on the poor smith rather with pauses of silence, and expressions of hope “that she might be mistaken,” all of which, from their very mystery, were more depreciatory than any direct charges. But when “wee Davie” was born, the old couple deemed it proper and due to themselves――not to speak of the respect due to their daughter, whom they sincerely loved――to come and visit her. Her mother had been with her, indeed, at an earlier period; and the house was so clean, and Thorburn so intelligent, and the child pronounced to be so like old David Armstrong, Jeanie’s father, especially about the forehead, that the two families, as the smith remarked, were evidently being welded, so that a few more gentle hammerings would make them one.

“Wee Davie,” as he grew up, became the fire of love which heated the hearts of good metal so as to enable favourable circumstances to give the necessary finishing stroke which would permanently unite them. These circumstances were constantly occurring until, at last, Armstrong called on every market-day to see his daughter and grandson, and he played with the boy (who was his only grandson), and took him on his knee, and put a “sweetie” into his mouth, and evidently felt as if he himself was reproduced and lived in the boy. This led to closer intercourse, until David Armstrong admitted that William Thorburn was one of the most sensible men he knew, and that he would not only back him against any of his acquaintances for a knowledge of a good horse, but for wonderful information as to the state of the country generally, especially of the landed interest and the high rent of land. Mrs. Armstrong finally admitted that Jeanie was not so far mistaken in her choice of a husband. The good woman always assumed that the sagacity of the family was derived from her side of the house. But whatever doubts still lingered in their minds as to the marriage, these were all dissipated by one look of “wee Davie.” “I’m just real proud aboot that braw bairn o’ Jeanie’s,” she used to say to her husband. She added one day, with a chuckling laugh and smile, “D’ye no’ think yersel’, gudeman, that wee Davie has a look o’ auld Davie?”

“Maybe, maybe,” replied auld Davie; “but I aye think he’s our ain bairn we lost thirty years syne.”

“That has been in my ain mind,” said his wife; “but I never liked to say it. But he’s no’ the waur o’ being like baith.”

Again: There lived in the same common passage, and opposite to William Thorburn’s door, an old soldier, a pensioner. He was a bachelor, and by no means disposed to hold much intercourse with his neighbours. The noise of the children was obnoxious to him. He maintained that “an hour’s drill every day would alone make them tolerable. Obedience to authority; right about, march! That’s the thing,” the Corporal would say to some father of a numerous family in the “close,” as he flourished his stick with a smile rather than a growl. Jeanie pronounced him to be “a selfish body.” Thorburn had more than once tried to cultivate acquaintance with him, as they were constantly brought into outward contact. But the Corporal was a Tory, and more than suspected the smith of holding “Radical” sentiments. To defend things as they were was a point of honour with the pensioner――a religion. Any dislike to the Government seemed a slight upon the army, and therefore upon himself. Thorburn at last avoided him, and pronounced him proud and ignorant. But one day “wee Davie” found his way into his house, and putting his hands on his knees as he smoked his pipe at the fireside, looked up to his face. The old soldier was arrested by the beauty of the child, and took him on his knee. To his surprise, Davie did not scream; and when his mother soon followed in search of her boy, and made many apologies for his “impudence,” as she called it, the Corporal maintained that he was a jewel, a perfect gentleman, and dubbed him “the Captain.”

Next day, tapping at Thorburn’s door, the Corporal gracefully presented a toy in the shape of a small sword and drum for his young hero. That night he smoked his pipe at the smith’s fireside, and told such stories of his battles as fired the smith’s enthusiasm, called forth his praises, and, what was more substantial, a most comfortable tea by Jeanie, which clinched their friendly intercourse. He and “the Captain” became constant associates, and many a loud laugh might be heard from the Corporal’s room as he played with the boy, and educated his genius. “He makes me young again, does the Captain!” remarked the Corporal to his mother.

Mrs. Fergusson, another neighbour, was also drawn into the same net by “wee Davie.” She was a fussy, gossiping woman, noisy and disagreeable. She found Jeanie uncongenial, who “kept herself to herself,” instead of giving away some of her good self to her neighbour, and thus taking some of her neighbour’s bad self out of her. But her youngest child became seriously ill, and Jeanie thought, “If Davie was ill I would like a neighbour to speir for him,” and so she went upstairs to visit Mrs. Fergusson, and begged pardon, but “wished to know how Mary was?” and Mrs. Fergusson was bowed down with sorrow, and thanked her, and bid her “to come ben.” And Jeanie did so, and spoke kindly to the child, and told her, moreover, what pleasure it would give her to nurse her baby occasionally; and she invited the younger children to come down to her house and play with “wee Davie,” and thus keep the sick one quiet; and she helped also to cook some nutritive drinks, and got nice milk from her father for the sick one, and often excused herself for apparent meddling by saying, “When one has a bairn o’ their ain, they canna but feel for other folk’s bairns.”

Mrs. Fergusson’s heart became subdued, softened, and friendly, and she said, “We took it as extraordinar’ kind in Mrs. Thorburn to do as she has done. It is a blessing to have sic a neighbour.”

But it was “wee Davie” did it.

The street in which the smith lived was as uninteresting as any could be. A description of its outs and ins would have made a “social science” meeting shudder. Beauty or even neatness it had not. Every “close” or “entry” in it looked like a sepulchre. The back courts were a huddled confusion of outhouses; strings of linens drying; stray dogs searching for food; pigeons similarly employed with more apparent success and satisfaction; and cats creeping about; with crowds of children, laughing, shouting, and muddy to the eyes, acting with intense glee the great dramas of life, marriages, battles, deaths, and burials, with castle-building and extensive farming and commercial operations. But everywhere smoke, mud, wet, and an utterly uncomfortable look. And so long as we in Scotland have a western ocean to afford an unlimited supply of water, and western mountains to condense it as it passes in the blue air over their summits, and western winds to waft it to our cities, and so long as it will pour down, and be welcomed by smoke above and earth below――then consequently so long we shall find it difficult to be “neat and tidy about the doors,” or to transport the cleanliness of England into our streets and lanes. But, in spite of all this, how many cheerful homes, with bright fires and nice furniture, and rows of books, and intelligent, sober, happy men and women, with healthy, nice children, are everywhere to be found in those very streets, that seem to the eye of those who have never penetrated farther than their outside, to be “dreadful-looking places;” and who imagine that all their inhabitants must be like pigs in pigstyes, steeped in wretchedness and whisky; and infer that every ignorant and filthy and drunken Irish brawler and labourer is a fair type of the whole of our artisans.

There is, I begin to suspect, a vast deal of exaggerated nonsense written about the working classes. Be that as it may, I feel pretty certain of this, that there is no country on earth in which the skilled and well-conducted artisan can get so much for his money, socially, physically, intellectually, and morally, as in our own Britain, and none in which there are to be found so many artisans who take advantage of these benefits. But for the ignorant and ill-disposed, the idle and the drunken, there is no country where their degradation is more rapid, and their ruin more sure. The former can easily rise above the mud, and breathe a free and happy atmosphere; but if he falls into it, it is likely he will be sooner smothered and buried than anywhere else on earth.

A happier home could hardly be found than William Thorburn’s, smith, as he sat, after coming home from his work, at the fireside, reading his newspaper, or some book of weightier literature, Jeanie sewing opposite to him, and, as it often happened, both absorbed occasionally in the rays of that bright light, “wee Davie,” which filled their dwelling, and the whole world, to their eyes; or listened to the grand concert of his happy voice, which mingled with their busy work and silent thoughts, giving harmony to all. How much was done for his sake! He was the most sensible, efficient, and thoroughly philosophical missionary of social science in all its departments who could enter that house.