might have wrestled through the winter. However, it was
ordered otherwise, and she was removed from mine to Abraham's bosom on
Christmas Day, and buried on Hogmanay, for it was thought uncanny to
have a dead corpse in the house on the New Year's Day.

Just by way of diversion in my heavy sorrow, I got a well-shapen
headstone made for her; but a headstone without a epitaph being no
better than a body without the breath of life in't, I made a poesy for
the monument, not in the Latin tongue, which Mrs. Balwhidder, worthy
woman as she was, did not understand, but in sedate language, which was
greatly thought of at the time. My servant lassies, having no eye of a
mistress over them, wasted everything at such a rate that, long before
the end of the year, the year's stipend was all spent, and I did not
know what to do. At lang and length I sent for Mr. Auld, a douce and
discreet elder, and told him how I was situated. He advised me, for my
own sake, to look out for another wife, as soon as decency would allow.

In the following spring I placed my affections, with due consideration,
on Miss Lizzy Kibbock, the well-brought-up daughter of Mr. Joseph
Kibbock, of the Gorbyholm, farmer; and we were married on the 29th day
of April, on account of the dread we had of being married in May, for it
is said, "Of the marriages in May, the bairns die of a decay." The
second Mrs. Balwhidder had a genius for management, and started a dairy,
and set the servant lassies to spin wool for making blankets and lint
for sheets and napery. She sent the butter on market days to Irville,
her cheese and huxtry to Glasgow. We were just coining money, in so much
that, after the first year, we had the whole tot of stipend to put into
the bank.

The opening of coal-pits in Douray Moor brought great prosperity to the
parish, but the coal-carts cut up the roads, especially the Vennel, a
narrow and crooked street in the clachan. Lord Eglesham came down from
London in the spring of 1767 to see the new lands he had bought in our
parish. His coach couped in the Vennel, and his lordship was thrown head
foremost into the mud. He swore like a trooper, and said he would get an
act of parliament to put down the nuisance. His lordship came to the
manse, and, being in a woeful plight, he got the loan of my best suit of
clothes. This made him wonderful jocose both with Mrs. Balwhidder and
me, for he was a portly man, and I but a thin body, and it was really
droll to s