ll-trading class of a Scottish provincial town at the
beginning of the nineteenth century. Moir died at Dumfries on
July 6, 1851.

_I.--Mansie's Forebears and Early Life_

Some of the rich houses and great folk pretend to have histories of the
ancientness of their families, which they can count back on their
fingers almost to the days of Noah's Ark, and King Fergus the First, but
it is not in my power to come further back than auld grand-faither, who
died when I was a growing callant. I mind him full well. To look at him
was just as if one of the ancient patriarchs had been left on the earth,
to let succeeding survivors witness a picture of hoary and venerable
eld.

My own father, auld Mansie Wauch, was, at the age of thirteen, bound a
'prentice to the weaver trade, which he prosecuted till a mortal fever
cut through the thread of his existence. Alas, as Job says, "How time
flies like a weaver's shuttle!" He was a decent, industrious,
hard-working man, doing everything for the good of his family, and
winning the respect of all who knew the value of his worth. On the
five-and-twentieth year of his age he fell in love with, and married, my
mother, Marion Laverock.

I have no distinct recollection of the thing myself, but there is every
reason to believe that I was born on October 13, 1765, in a little house
in the Flesh-Market Gate, Dalkeith, and the first thing I have any clear
memory of was being carried on my auntie's shoulders to see the Fair
Race. Oh! but it was a grand sight! I have read since the story of
Aladdin's Wonderful Lamp, but that fair and the race, which was won by a
young birkie who had neither hat nor shoon, riding a philandering beast
of a horse thirteen or fourteen years auld, beat it all to sticks.

In time, I was sent to school, where I learned to read and spell, making
great progress in the Single and Mother's Carritch. What is more, few
could fickle me in the Bible, being mostly able to spell it all over,
save the second of Ezra and the seventh of Nehemiah, which the Dominie
himself could never read through twice in the same way, or without
variation.

Being of a delicate make--nature never intended me for the naval or
military line, or for any robustious profession--I was apprenticed to
the tailoring trade. Just afterwards I had a terrible stound of
calf-love, my first flame being the minister's lassie, Jess, a buxom and
forward queen, two or three years older than myself. I