Upon a consideration of many things, it appears to me very strange, that almost the whole tot of our improvements became, in a manner, the parents of new plagues and troubles to the magistrates.It might reasonably have been thought that the lamps in the streets would have been a terror to evil-doers, and the plainstone side-pavements paths of pleasantness to them that do well; but, so far from this being the case, the very reverse was the consequence.The servant lasses went freely out (on their errands) at night, and at late hours, for their mistresses, without the protection of lanterns, by which they were enabled to gallant in a way that never could have before happened: for lanterns are kenspeckle commodities, and of course a check on every kind of gavaulling.
Thus, out of the lamps sprung no little irregularity in the conduct of servants, and much bitterness of spirit on that account to mistresses, especially to those who were of a particular turn, and who did not choose that their maidens should spend their hours a-field, when they could be profitably employed at home.
Of the plagues that were from the plainstones, I have given an exemplary specimen in the plea between old perjink Miss Peggy Dainty, and the widow Fenton, that was commonly called the Tappit-hen.For the present, I shall therefore confine myself in this NOTABENA to an accident that happened to Mrs Girdwood, the deacon of the coopers' wife--a most managing, industrious, and indefatigable woman, that allowed no grass to grow in her path.
Mrs Girdwood had fee'd one Jeanie Tirlet, and soon after she came home, the mistress had her big summer washing at the public washing-house on the green--all the best of her sheets and napery--both what had been used in the course of the winter, and what was only washed to keep clear in the colour, were in the boyne.It was one of the greatest doings of the kind that the mistress had in the whole course of the year, and the value of things intrusted to Jeanie's care was not to be told, at least so said Mrs Girdwood herself.
Jeanie and Marion Sapples, the washerwoman, with a pickle tea and sugar tied in the corners of a napkin, and two measured glasses of whisky in an old doctor's bottle, had been sent with the foul clothes the night before to the washing-house, and by break of day they were up and at their work; nothing particular, as Marion said, was observed about Jeanie till after they had taken their breakfast, when, in spreading out the clothes on the green, some of the ne'er-do-weel young clerks of the town were seen gaffawing and haverelling with Jeanie, the consequence of which was, that all the rest of the day she was light-headed; indeed, as Mrs Girdwood told me herself, when Jeanie came in from the green for Marion's dinner, she couldna help remarking to her goodman, that there was something fey about the lassie, or, to use her own words, there was a storm in her tail, light where it might.But little did she think it was to bring the dule it did to her.
