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 used to sit looking at her in the kirk, and felt a droll confusion when our eyes met.  It dirled through my heart like a dart.  Fain would I have spoken to her, but aye my courage failed me, though whiles she gave me a smile when she passed.  She used to go to the well every night with her two stoups to draw water, so I thought of watching to give her two apples which I had carried in my pocket for more than a week for that purpose.  How she started when I stappit them into her hand, and brushed by without speaking!

Jamie Coom, the blacksmith, who I aye jealoused was my rival, came up and asked Jess, with a loud guffaw, “Where is the tailor?” When I heard that, I took to my heels till I found myself on the little stool by the fireside with the hamely sound of my mother’s wheel bum-bumming in my lug, like a gentle lullaby.

The days of the years of my ’prenticeship having glided cannily over, I girt myself round about with a proud determination of at once cutting my mother’s apron-string.  So I set out for Edinburgh in search of a journeyman’s place, which I got the very first day in the Grassmarket.  My lodging was up six pairs of stairs, in a room which I rented for half-a-crown a week, coals included; but my heart was sea-sick of Edinburgh folk and town manners, for which I had no stomach.  I could form no friendly acquaintanceship with a living soul.  Syne I abode by myself, like St. John in the Isle of Patmos, on spare allowance, making a sheep-head serve me for three days’ kitchen.

Everything around me seemed to smell of sin and pollution, and often did I commune with my own heart, that I would rather be a sober, poor, honest man in the country, able to clear my day and way by the help of Providence, than the provost himself, my lord though he be, or even the mayor of London, with his velvet gown trailing for yards in the glaur behind him, or riding about the streets in a coach made of clear crystal and wheels of beaten gold.

But when my heart was sickening unto death, I fell in with the greatest blessing of my life, Nanse Cromie, a bit wench of a lassie frae the Lauder direction, who had come to be a servant in the flat below our workshop, and whom I often met on the stairs.

If ever a man loved, and loved like mad, it was me; and I take no shame in the confession.  Let them laugh who like; honest folk, I pity them; such know not the pleasures of virtuous affection.  Matters were by and bye settled full tosh between us; and though the means of both parties were small, we were young, and able and willing to help one another.  Nanse and me laid our heads together towards the taking a bit house in the fore-street of Dalkeith, and at our leisure bought the plenishing.