The Chronicles of Kartdale. Our Jeames

Preface

. When I first made the acquaintance of the old schoolmaster of Brigton, I little thought that he would ever make of me a literary legatee. Indeed, it was only after years of friendly intercourse with him, that I discovered he had been putting his pen to paper in behalf of posterity. Though he was a man endowed with an intelligence readily discerned, and one in whose company I always derived the greatest comfort, as he would sit at my fireside of a winter's night, spinning his yarns about Kartdale and its neighbourhood, the thought never struck me that he was ever likely to become a candidate for literary fame. His manner was always the reticence of modesty itself. One evening, however, he arrived at my house, with a portmanteau in his hand, and, after the usual greetings, I noticed that he set it down carefully within the parlour door.

My first thought was that the old gentleman was going to stay with me all night, ancl the idea naturally gave me the highest delight, since our sederunt could thus be prolonged to " the wee short hour ayont the twal." But by and by I found out my mistake. The old schoolmaster did not intend to stay with me all night. His portmanteau contained no part of his wardrobe. And nobody could have been

PREFACE.

. VI more taken aback than I was, when, after a preliminary conversation on sundry subjects, the old man told me, not without a very careful breaking of the ice, that he had made up his mind to make me his literary executor. Of course I urged my literary inexperience, and the danger there would be to his name and fame in employing a novice as his editor. But he would take no denial. - He had long been convinced that I was the only man to whom he could intrust the task of looking over his papers, when he was dead and gone; and when there came a quaver in the old man's voice as he opened his portmanteau and lifted from its compartments several piles of manuscript, I felt how impotent I was to do anything that would tend to bring discomfort to the old gentleman. Thus did I become the old schoolmaster's literary executor.

And now after careful revision of his autobiography, as well as of his sketches, short tales and verses, I have decided to present to the public this the first instalment of the literary remains of the most sterling friend I ever had. In these sketches I have made little or no attempt to change the old man's style, about which the reader may notice, perhaps, the least possible flavour of the schoolmaster's proverbial verbosity. My only justification in presuming to see his writings through the press, lies in the hope that the merits of the author may force the reader to think as seldom as possible of the editor. J. M. H. The gloaming of life has no tale to avow Compared with the tale of the springtide that's past : The griefs of the then are the joys of our now, The bad is a better, the good is our best.

Although more than a hundred years have elapsed since Kartdale first started on its prosperous career as a manufacturing centre, it is even yet at times looked upon by some of its sister parishes as a kind of a new place. As everybody knows who has studied the gazetteer of Scotland, the town has had a very rapid growth, much more rapid, it is said, than any other town of its size from the Cheviots to John O'Groat's House; and although the industries which first gave its commercial activities an impulse — the weaving and the cotton-spinning trades — have now all but died out, others have taken their place, and at the present writing the burgh of Kartdale continues to be one of the most thriving towns in the west. The valley in which it is situated is watered by a stream, which provides many of the factories with a never-failing water power, and which drains an outside broadening plain that extends to the banks of the parent river.

On account of the level character of the site on which the town itself is built, the streets have a regular appearance, radiating at right angles from the Main Street, which formed in early days the king's highway, and which is now, as its name implies, the principal thoroughfare. A local artist has published a series of sketches of the principal buildings of the town, among which, of course, take rank as the most interesting, the seven churches. It is needless to say that these sketches have a special interest to those who have not seen she place for years, and when the news was carried to the writer, who has been away from the old scenes for more than a quarter of a century now, that a new minister had been inducted to the charge of one of th; churches the artist has so skilfully depicted, there came welling up in his memory the personality of this one and of that one who would have been present at the installation ceremonies, had death or absence from Kartdale not prevented them.

It must now be nearly forty years since the " placing " of the incumbent who lately retired, was celebrated in the little edifice — forty years of busy life to him, forty years of changes — ah, how many ! — to his congregation ; and yet nearly all the incidents connected* with the earlier ceremony came out clearly on the writer's memory, as he sat in a kind of mesmeric dream over the artist's pen-and-ink delineation of the "auld biggin" in which it took place. The improvised platform with its rows of ministers assembled from the neighbouring parishes, the laying on of hands and the addresses to the newly ordained minister and his people, the soiree in the evening and the presentation of pulpit-gown and Bible, the congratulations and the home-rejoicings — all came up before him, for the moment, as if the event had been but of yesterday.

And again the humble pageant has been repeated. In the description given of the more recent installation observances, there is no mention made of the church-officer; and yet few of us still living, who were present at the former " placing," can fail to remember the old man who, as sexton, was the busy master of ceremonies on that occasion. Things may have changed since then, and the wings of the present incumbent of Jeames's office may have been clipped ; but we can hardly think that the personality of our friend Jeames, for every boy in our time recognized in Jeames a friend, is likely to be forgotten as long as there are tongues in the parish of Kartdale to gossip of the past. For be it known that Jeames was a character, perhaps the last of the race which Dean Ramsay has so well depicted by anecdote and illustration.

Like the class of which he was a relic, his eccentricity was more of the office than of the man. There was in him a certain kind of ability which commanded respect even from those above his station in life, while with the younger folks of the congregation he was not only a favourite but a man of great weight in theological disputings. Towards the latter he was as obliging and condescending in his manner as he was to the elders of the church. Indeed, he had a way of meeting the impertinences of youth — no boy ever thought of being actually impudent to Jeames — which seldom failed to put a check upon them ; and yet, at the same time, his manner with the obstreperous was so gentle and unassertive, except in matters pertaining ■2 to dogma and church creeds, that he seldom lost his popularity even with the misdemeanant whom he had occasion to reprove.

In a word, Jeames was looked upon as being as much of a permanency about the church as any other individual connected with it. As a weaver, Jeames had never prospered. But for his office in the church, he would have, no doubt, taken rank as a mere " puir body " in the town. The office was the man, and Jeames was by no means slow to emphasize the fact whenever an opportunity occurred to magnify his office. According to his own opinion, variously expressed, he was, without doubt, the next highest official to the minister, even to the exclusion of the precentor or the ruling elder; and always when he spoke of the congregation over which, as he was accustomed to say, " we preside, as it were," the ex pression " our kirk " had about it, as uttered by him, an unction which neither italics nor inverted commas can possibly represent.

Nor was the dignity of his office by any means concealed when he undertook to discuss some knotty point of theology with the younger folks, of a Sabbath afternoon in the session hcuse. On such occasions his utterances were nearly always given ex cathedra, in tones which seemed to ward off all discussion. With the most of us Jeames had no equal as a theologian in the church, unless it were the minister and one or two of the elders, though we had no means of comparing him with these, seeing they never thought of discussing theological difficulties with us. Indeed, it was through Jeames's teachings that many of us had our first wrestlings with Cal vinism, and thus learned to defend ourselves against the heterodoxy of other creeds and denominations. In him we found a living exponent of the faith our fathers professed ; in him was to be seen the possessor of a logical insight that could detect the foul fallacies of Armenianism, as he called them, or of any other ism that was not to be identified as part and parcel of the true Presbyterianism.

Gifted with a fluency of speech which seldom halted to pay respect to an in terruption, he was all the more able to show to advan tage his intimate knowledge of the history of the Bible and its teachings, interlarding his arguments, as he always did, with some of the many hundreds of texts he had memorized during his moments of leisure. " I'm no gaun to say," he would sometimes declare, " that there's nae chance for ither folk ; that would maybe be to gang ower faur, and be unnecessarily limiting the mercy o' God himsel'; though the Confes sion o' Faith is in itsel' nae respecter o' persons out side the pale o' Presbyterianism. But whether or no ither folk forbye Presbyterians hae a chance, there's ae thing I hae decided in my ain mind, and that is that the man wha doesnae attend our kirk is living at a disadvantage, if no to his morals, at least to his theology.

The spoon-meat that is whiles served out to some o' our neighbours, gin a' stories be true, maun surely be fushionless stuff. Exactly sae ! " Or at other times when he happened to notice some stranger in the church of a Sabbath, he would often say : — " We are mightily glad to see outsiders coming to hear us, even if it be only occasionally. The sugh o' the truth cannae be hauden within our four walls, thick though they be. The report o' the manfu' expositions o' our humble organization cannae but hae an effect on the outside world, and thereby induce the spoon-fed folk o' our neighborhood to come within the influence o' things better than they're accustomed to. Man, when I sometimes look in the e'en o' thae stranger bodies that come to hear us, as they sit drinking in ilka word o' the discourse, I see how wonderfully the right o't, sae eloquently expressed frae aboon my seat, refreshes them in their hearts ancl very souls.

They actually gang hame new creatures. Exactly sae ! " As has been hinted, the session-house was Jeames's theological hall. It consisted of a small compartment enclosed underneath the gallery of the church in the north-west corner of the quaint old square edifice; and there it was, during the interval of public worship, or, as has been said, in the afternoon before Sunday school, that Jeames was accustomed to have a band of eager listeners around, listening to his dogmatic utterances, or what was more interesting, to a discussion between him and some young or elderly disputant, as the case might be. During the weinter months, these audiences were always at their largest, since to the interest of the sexton's disquisitions there was added the comfort of a glowing fire in the large old-fashioned stove which stood in a corner of the room.

There was not a little of the Socratic method about Jeames's teachings, though there was seldom any of the irony of the wily Athenian to be detected in them. Like the great Grecian philosopher, he was for ever searching after the truth, though it was always after the manner of one who had found it ; and however at times he would fall a victim to some shrewd antagonist, he was seldom unsuccessful in his raids against youthful ignorance. Innovations of any kind, from the improving of the heating apparatus to the slightest change in the manner of conducting the service, were Jeames's ab horrence, though it must in justice be said of him that he was never the last to give in, when the changes had once been accomplished. "An innovation is the finger-post to a heresy," he was accustomed to say, " and it's mair than I can un derstan' how men can gie way to the new-fangled notions o' a wheen o' bee-headed loons, wha care as muckle about the purifying o' God's house, as did the Pharisees and money-changers o' auld.

The women folks are aye easily enough carried awa' by sic falda rals ; but that men, in whom God breathed the breath o' life and manhood, should think weel o' heresy in ony form is past my comprehension. Gie them ane o' thae new-fangled psalm-tunes, and they want a baund; gie them a baund and they'll want an organ, and gie them the kist o' whistles, and afore ye ken whaur ye are, ye'll hae the minister dressed in crimson and a cocked hat, wi' caunles burning a' about him in the pulpit. Exactly sae ! " " Let sic heretics as wish for a new and improved psalmody and kirk service," he would sometimes con tinue in spite of interruption, " let sic heretics, I say, read the Scots' Worthies, and there they'll find in a book maist as honestly and inspiredly written as the Bible itsel', something about the simplicity o' public worship, when our forefaithers had neither pulpit nor pew to sit in.

Their simple service was guid enough for them, honest men, and is surely guid enough for us that cannae boast o' a' their piety or upright con duct, or even the half o't. Gin I had my will, I would stick to their plan o' worship as a saving grace. For few will deny that their hearts were in the right place, or say that their way o' thinking was nae sound." On one occasion, after due consideration, the session had come to the decision that the old practice of reading the line should be discontinued by the precentor. The practice handed down probably from Knox's time, when many of the common people were unable to read, had been introduced into " our kirk " by the men who had built it ; and such a " use and wont " cere mony could hardly disappear without giving some little offence to the older adherents.

Of those who were offended, or professed to be offended for a time, was our friend Jeames, and as usual he was not slow to express his indignation at what he called an innovation that would be sure to lead to something worse. " Guid forgie us for the sacrileege ! " was his exclamation to some of his more youthful disciples, during the afternoon of the day on which the precentor laid aside the semblance of the town-crier as he intoned the sacred words that were to be sung, after his recital of them in the keynote of the psalm-tune. "Ay, Guid forgie us for the sacrileege! Gin there be ae kind o' a theft waur than anither, it is surely the thieving that puts its hand to the public worship o' God's ain folk, that begrudges the richness in length and breadth o' a people's piety as expressed in praise o' Him that made us a'.

This scrimpin' o' our feelings as expressed in words is naething short o' profanity, and if Providence owerlook it, it is maybe mair than it has ony right to dae." " But whaur is the profanity ? " asked one of the lads whose father was one of those who had advocated the change. " If there be profanity in it, it maun surely be profanity unspoken." " And is there nae sic a thing as aiths unborn ? " exclaimed Jeames. " Ah, my man, ye maun ken there is a profanity of omission as weel as o' commission, though maybe ye are ower young to understand the maitter as I do. But wait till ye're as auld as I am, and ye'll maybe experience how fine a thing it is in the worship o' God to hae your mouth saturated twice ower wi' the contrite words o' the inspired psalmist." Among the adherents of Jeames's philosophy class, some of whom were fairly well up in their schooling, as the saying is, the above doctrine was for ever after known as Jeames's " dogma of double saturation."

Little things disturb small communities, the discus sion over them often leading to the verge of disintegra tion. Some time after the noise in connection with the above-mentioned innovation had subsided, and when people had come to speak of it .as a custom of the past only to be laughed at, the precentor thought to introduce one Sunday morning — some said on his own responsibility, though he would hardly have dared do that — one of those psalm tunes — St. Anne's, per haps — in which the last two lines of the stanza are repeated in the course of singing it. There had been rumors afloat for some weeks before that such a thing was in contemplation ; for the singing class which the precentor conducted once a week in the session-house, would hardly have been engaged, as was said, in prac tising such a tune, unless some use were going to be made of it.

The whole congregation was therefore on the qui vive for the innovation, ready to be divided into two parties the moment the new tune was to be heard in the church proper. Of course Jeames knew that there was something afoot, and he and some of the other more conservative of the brethren had been seen shaking their heads in mournful conference over the matter, although they were intelligent enough not to condemn a thing before it had been tried. The only man that really uplifted his voice against the move ment in its embryo state, was one Robin Drum, an honest sort of a man who had, moreover, an opinion of his own on most matters, though the opinion was not always shared in by his neighbours. Perhaps it was Robin's opposition that produced the most of the excitement over the introduction of the new tune, for people were beginning to listen to the advocacy which some of the Presbyterian ministers were entering upon at the time for an improved psalmody ; at least he was known to have spoken his mind quite freely on the subject to Jeames, bringing his indignation to the fever point of threatening to leave the church if the precentor's plans were not frustrated.

"Ye maun nae think o' sic a thing at your time o' life," Jeames is said to have advised. "Ye hae been sae lang accustomed to the wholesome food o' our bit sanctuary here, that ye would fairly starve yoursel' in ony ither communion : ye maun nae think o' sic a thing." " Starve or no starve," Robin is said to have replied, " I'll no stand this kind o' thing. It would be rank hypocrisy for me no to resist this attempt o' Satan to mingle wi' the sons o' God in their worship as in the days o' Job, seeing I'm convinced in my ain mind that the ways o' Satan and the scarlet lady are but ane and the same; and ye'll hardly be inclined to think ither wise yoursel, considering your responsibilities as an officer in God's temple, when ye contemplate the at tempts that are bein' made to introduce skirlin' tunes that hae their proper place amang the roistering ne'er do-weels o' Satan's kingdom in the goose-dubs o' a fause religion."

" You're nae doubt right in a' that ye say, Mr. Drum," answered Jeames, " but we maun jist haud our souls in patience until we hear what the thing is like. I'm no a man to condemn a thing afore proving it, and, come what may, I think I'll stick to the auld big gin', and I think sae should you, Mr. Drum. In this worl' we may gang farder for a guid thing and fare waur than in our kirk, whaur the doctrine is sound enough, even if the service should gang a wee bit aglee." The influence of neither Robin Drum nor Jeames, however, had any effect upon the precentor, who, on a subsequent Sabbath, put up the long tickets or psalm-tune cards on either side of him with as much nonchalance as if the new tune were but an ordinary one. All went well enough until the fourth line was completed ; but when the precentor returned to the third line of the verse to repeat it, all eyes were directed towards a movement in Robin Drum's seat, where he, his wife and their seven children arose simultaneously, and, at a signal given by the head of the Drum household, marched in procession down the long aisle, seemingly keeping step to the precentor's singing.

Of course such an incident could not but create a commotion after the restraint of the service was over, and but for the merriment created by a wag who re christened the unfortunate tune by calling it " Robin Drum's March," the discussions might have taken a more serious turn for the peace of the congregation. As it was, there was discussion enough about the matter during the week, the minister having at last to interfere by calling upon Mr. Drum and promising to have his opinion respected as far as it was possible. Jeames, of course, continued for a time in opposition to what he called " the unsightly desecration o' the precentor's box." But it was in the afternoon after the offence to Robin's feelings had occurred, that his indignation rose to its higher degree of temperature "Woe unto that thing by which offences come !" he exclaimed to his youthful friends in the session house.

" Robin Drum may be headstrong in some things, but he's honest for a' that. I'm no gaun' to justify him in the course he has ta'en, but the thing that has offended him should not be tolerated in ony truly Christian place o' worship. Let this thing con tinue, and we'll hae a baund in the kirk afore mony months gang by. Exactly sae ! " " But what is wrang wi' the tune ? " asked one of his listeners. "It's no' the tune that's sae far wrang, if it would only stop at the right place; but for us to gang on skirlih' the last twa lines, as if we wanted to impress the Almighty wi' the sweetness o' our singing — a pridefu' thing for onybody to dae — is mair than ony upright man can stand." " It may be right enough what you say," said his disciple, respectfully, though not without a twinkle in his eye, " but I'm afraid, Jeames, ye haenae yet experienced to its fullest extent, how fine a thing it is in the worship o' God to hae your mouth saturated twice ower wi' the contrite words o' the inspired psalmist;" and thus it was that Jeames's " dogma of double saturation," became better known than ever from its once being wielded to his own disadvantage in argument.

But after all that has been told of the worthy sexton, it remains to be said that among his many virtues there lurked a vice, or at least what some people even in his time were beginning to denounce as a vice. The fact is, Jeames was fond of a glass, a habit which he himself, in speaking of it, declared to have been con tracted in his younger days when the weaver lads with whom he associated had more pence than prudence. And as there are few men, in the lower walks of life, at least, who are more highly esteemed than they de serve, so it was with Jeames, when his character was being discussed by the "unco' guid." His chief fault, if not his only one, always seemed to come uppermost with some folk, who, even when praising him for some remark he had made or some kindness he had done, were sure to regret that such an obliging, simple minded man should ever be apt to forget himself.

But if the truth of the matter had always been kept in view in regard to Jeames's wee bits of trials, as he called them, his half-and-half friends— for he had no foes — would have been more inclined than they were to blame those who paid for his treats than the poor man himself. Indeed, Jeames had no money of his own to spend in either treating himself or other people, and when he did happen to get a toothful too much, as the saying is, he had no doubt been drawn on by the couthieness of the crack with some drouthy neigh bour who was willing enough to pay the lawing to have the benefit of the crack. For if Jeames was an in teresting conversationalist at most of times, he was even more so when he had a glass in, and as he was known in a social way by everybody of his own class in the town, it was often difficult enough for him to take a walk down the street and escape the necessity of licking his lips or using a peppermint drop.

On one occasion, ancl only one, as far as can be remembered, did James's predilection in the matter of strong waters lead him into what could be called a serious difficulty, as far as his position as church-officer was concerned. And here it may be said that the worthy sexton was not a man ever given to drink himself beyond all self-conscious cognizance. As has been said, he was a man fond of his glass, and seldom or never went beyond two or three at a time, even under the most pressing inducements ; but on the occasion in which he became seriously involved with the digni taries of the congregation, he unfortunately happened to take his glass or two at a very inopportune season, and thus fell a victim to circumstances, as many have done before and since, even when engaged in com mitting a less doubtful act of piety than taking a glass of whiskey on a Sunday morning.

But the story had better be told in something like the language which Jeames himself used, when he afterwards gave it as one of the most serious experiences of his life. " I'm no ane to justify ony act o' mine that has even the appearance o' evil about it," he would say. " There's nae doubt I was wrang ; but when on the Sunday morning I met Willie Turnbull, and saw how anxious he was to find somebody to join him jist for a minute or sae in the Cross Keys near by, I had nae the heart to refuse him, for he is really a kind-hearted young man is Willie; and since he has maybe ower muckle siller in his hand for a man o' his time o' life, and is hardly possessed o' strength o' mind enough to keep it, there cannae be very much hairm in encour aging him at times to spend some o't on ither folk that hae hard times to mak' ends meet.

Ye ken, it is aye my custom, when the morning is guid, to tak' a bit stroll through the town as soon as I hae seen. everything put to rights in the kirk; and sae it was on the Sunday I speak of ; it was a fine frosty morning, and I hadnae got further than the middle o' the square, when wha should turn up but Willie himsel', a wee kenning bleared about the e'en, and looking kind o' disconsolate like." " ' A guid morning to ye, Mr. Turnbull,' says I to him as I made to continue my stroll. " ' It may be a guid enough morning to you, Jeames,' said he, ' but I'm thinking my head 'ill not let me see it in the same light as you ; ' and he laughed a kind o' cheerless laugh. ' By the way, do you think the Cross Key folks are up yet, Jeames ? ' " ' I'm sure I cannae tell,' said I, ' but there's naething like trying to get them up, if ye really want them.' " ' Come awa then,' said he, ' and we'll try,' and he made to put his airm into mine.