done wrong, and I am sorry for't; they'll never find me in
siccan a scrape again."

Thomas Burlings, in a friendly way, shook hands with me; telling that he
would go back and plead with the session in my behalf. To do him justice
he was not worse than his word, for I have aye attended the kirk as
usual, standing, when it came to my rotation, at the plate, and nobody,
gentle or simple, ever spoke to me on the subject of the playhouse, or
minted the matter of the rebuke from that day to this.

_V.--Benjie a Barber_

When wee Benjie came to his thirteenth year, many and long were the
debates between his fond mother and me what trade we would bring him up
to. His mother thought that he had just the physog of an admiral, and
when the matter was put to himsell, Benjie said quite briskly he would
like to be a gentleman. At which I broke through my rule never to lift
my fist to the bairn, and gave him such a yerk in the cheek with the
loof of my hand, as made, I am sure, his lugs ring, and sent him dozing
to the door like a peerie.

We discussed, among other trades and professions, a lawyer's advocatt, a
preaching minister, a doctor, a sweep, a rowley-powley man, a
penny-pie-man, a man-cook, that easiest of all lives, a gentleman's
gentleman; but in the end Nanse, when I suggested a barber, gave a
mournful look and said in a state of Christian resignation, "Tak' your
ain way, gudeman."

And so Benjie was apprenticed to be a barber, for, as I made the
observe, "Commend me to a safe employment, and a profitable. They may
give others the nick, and draw blood, but catch them hurting themselves.
The foundations of the hair-cutting and the shaving line are as sure as
that of the everlasting rocks; beards being likely to roughen, and heads
to require polling as long as wood grows and water runs."

Benjie is now principal shop-man in a Wallflower Hair-Powder and Genuine
Macassar Oil Warehouse, kept by three Frenchmen, called Moosies
Peroukey, in the West End of London. But, though our natural enemies, he
writes me that he has found them agreeable and shatty masters, full of
good manners and pleasant discourse, and, except in their language,
almost Christians.

I aye thought Benjie was a genius, and he is beginning to show himself
his father's son, being in thoughts of taking out a patent for making a
hair-oil from rancid butter. If he succeeds it will make the callant's
fortune. But he must not marry Madamoselle Peroukey wi