There being a vacancy for a schoolmistress, it was proposed to Mrs Malcolm, that, under her superintendence, her daughter Kate, that had been learning great artifices in needle-work so long with Lady Macadam, should take up the school, and the session undertook to make good to Kate the sum of five pounds sterling per annum, over and above what the scholars were to pay.But Mrs Malcolm said she had not strength herself to warsle with so many unruly brats, and that Kate, though a fine lassie, was a tempestuous spirit, and might lame some of the bairns in her passion; and that selfsame night, Lady Macadam wrote me a very complaining letter, for trying to wile away her companion; but her ladyship was a canary-headed woman, and given to flights and tantrums, having in her youth been a great toast among the quality.It would, however, have saved her from a sore heart, had she never thought of keeping Kate Malcolm.For this year her only son, who was learning the art of war at an academy in France, came to pay her, his lady mother, a visit.He was a brisk and light-hearted stripling, and Kate Malcolm was budding into a very rose of beauty; so between them a hankering began, which, for a season, was productive of great heaviness of heart to the poor old cripple lady; indeed, she assured me herself, that all her rheumatics were nothing to the heart-ache which she suffered in the progress of this business.But that will be more treated of hereafter; suffice it to say for the present, that we have thus recorded how the plan for making Kate Malcolm our schoolmistress came to nought.It pleased, however, Him, from whom cometh every good and perfect gift, to send at this time among us a Miss Sabrina Hooky, the daughter of old Mr Hooky, who had been schoolmaster in a neighbouring parish.She had gone, after his death, to live with an auntie in Glasgow, that kept a shop in the Gallowgate.It was thought that the old woman would have left her heir to all her gatherings, and so she said she would, but alas! our life is but within our lip.Before her testament was made, she was carried suddenly off by an apoplectick, an awful monument of the uncertainty of time and the nearness of eternity, in her own shop, as she was in the very act of weighing out an ounce of snuff to a professor of the College, as Miss Sabrina herself told me.Being thus destitute, it happened that Miss Sabrina heard of the vacancy in our parish, as it were, just by the cry of a passing bird, for she could not tell how;although I judge myself that William Keckle the elder had a hand in it, as he was at the time in Glasgow; and she wrote me a wonderful well-penned letter bespeaking the situation, which letter came to hand on the morn following Lady Macadam's stramash to me about Kate Malcolm, and I laid it before the session the same day; so that, by the time her auntie's concern was taken off her hands, she had a home and a howf among us to come in, to the which she lived upwards of thirty years in credit and respect, although some thought she had not the art of her predecessor, and was more uppish in her carriage than befitted the decorum of her vocation.Hers, however, was but a harmless vanity; and, poor woman, she needed all manner of graces to set her out; for she was made up of odds and ends, and had but one good eye, the other being blind, and just like a blue bead.At first she plainly set her cap for Mr Lorimore, but after oggling and goggling at him every Sunday in the kirk for a whole half-year and more, Miss Sabrina desisted in despair.
But the most remarkable thing about her coming into the parish, was the change that took place in Christian names among us.Old Mr Hooky, her father, had, from the time he read his Virgil, maintained a sort of intromission with the nine muses, by which he was led to baptize her Sabrina, after a name mentioned by John Milton in one of his works.Miss Sabrina began by calling our Jennies Jessies, and our Nannies Nancies; alas! I have lived to see even these likewise grow old-fashioned.She had also a taste in the mantua-making line, which she had learnt in Glasgow; and I could date from the very Sabbath of her first appearance in the kirk, a change growing in the garb of the younger lassies, who from that day began to lay aside the silken plaidie over the head, the which had been the pride and bravery of their grandmothers; and instead of the snood, that was so snod and simple, they hided their heads in round-eared bees-cap mutches, made of gauze and catgut, and other curious contrivances of French millendery; all which brought a deal of custom to Miss Sabrina, over and above the incomings and Candlemas offerings of school; insomuch that she saved money, and in the course of three years had ten pounds to put in the bank.
At the time, these alterations and revolutions in the parish were thought a great advantage; but now when I look back upon them, as a traveller on the hill over the road he has passed, I have my doubts.
For with wealth come wants, like a troop of clamorous beggars at the heels of a generous man; and it's hard to tell wherein the benefit of improvement in a country parish consists, especially to those who live by the sweat of their brow.But it is not for me to make reflections; my task and duty is to note the changes of time and habitudes.
