Page:Important passages in the life of Mansie Wauch, tailor in Dalkeith.pdf/9

9 PUSHING MY FORTUNE.

The days of the years of my 'prenticeship having glided cannily over on the working-board of my respected maister, James Hosey, where I sat working cross-legged like a busy bee, in the true spirit of industrious contentment, I found myself at the end of the seven year, so well instructed in the tailoring trade, to which I had paid a near-sighted attention. that, without more ado, I girt myself round about with a proud determination of at once cutting my mother's apron string, and venturing to go without a hold. Thinks I to myself "faint heart never won fair lady:" so, taking my stick in my hand, I set out towards Edinburgh, as brave as a Hielander in search of a journeyman's place. I may set it down to an especial providence, that I found one, on the very first day, to my heart's content in by at the Grassmarket, where I stayed for the space of six calendar months.

Had it not been from a real sense of the duty I owed to my future employers, whomsoever they might be, in making myself a first-rate hand in the cutting, shaping, and sewing line, I would not have found courage in my breast to have helped me out through such a long and dreary time.

Never let us repine, howsomever, but consider that all is ordered for the best! The sons of the patriarch Jacob found out their brother Joseph in a foreign land, and where they least expected it: so it was here—even here where my heart was sickening unto death, from my daily and nightly thoughts being as bitter as gall—that I fell in with the greatest blessing of my life, Nanse Cromie!

In the flat below our workshop lived Mrs Whitterraick, the wife of Mr. Whitterraick, a dealer in hens and hams in the poultry market, who coming from the Lauder neighbourhood had hired a bit