In this year Charlie Malcolm, Mrs. Malcolm’s eldest son, was sent to sea in a tobacco-trader that sailed between Port Glasgow and Virginia.  Tea-drinking was beginning to spread more openly, in so much that by the advice of the first Mrs. Balwhidder, Mrs. Malcolm took in tea to sell to eke out something to the small profits of her wheel.  I lost some of my dislike to the tea after that, and we had it for breakfast at the manse as well as in the afternoon.  But what I thought most of it for was that it did no harm to the head of the drinkers, which was not always the case with the possets in fashion before, when I remember decent ladies coming home with red faces from a posset-masking.  So I refrained from preaching against tea henceforth, but I never lifted the weight of my displeasure from off the smuggling trade, until it was utterly put down by the strong hand of government.

II.—­The Minister’s Second Marriage

A memorable year, both in public and private, was 1763.  The king granted peace to the French.  Lady Macadam, widow of General Macadam, who lived in her jointure-house, took Kate Malcolm to live with her as companion, and she took pleasure in teaching Kate all her accomplishments and how to behave herself like a lady.  The lint-mill on Lugton Water was burned to the ground, with not a little of the year’s crop of lint in our parish.  The first Mrs. Balwhidder lost upwards of twelve stone, which was intended for sarking to ourselves and sheets and napery.  A great loss indeed it was, and the vexation thereof had a visible effect on her health, which from the spring had been in a dwining way.  But for it, I think she 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.