The Rev. Z. Pringle,
D.D., to Mr. Micklewham, Schoolmaster and
Session-Clerk of Garnock
London.
London.
Dear Sir—I have written by
the post that will take this to hand, a letter to Banker M---y,
at Irvine, concerning some small matters of money that I may
stand in need of his opinion anent; and as there is a prospect
now of a settlement of the legacy business, I wish you to take a
step over to the banker, and he will give you ten pounds, which
you will administer to the poor, by putting a twenty-shilling
note in the plate on Sunday, as a public testimony from me of
thankfulness for the hope that is before us; the other nine
pounds you will quietly, and in your own canny way, divide after
the following manner, letting none of the partakers thereof know
from what other hand than the Lord’s the help comes, for,
indeed, from whom but His does any
good befall us!
You will give to auld Mizy Eccles ten shillings.
She’s a careful creature, and it will go as far with her
thrift as twenty will do with Effy Hopkirk; so you will give Effy
twenty. Mrs. Binnacle, who lost her husband, the sailor,
last winter, is, I am sure, with her two sickly bairns, very ill
off; I would therefore like if you will lend her a note, and ye
may put half-a-crown in the hand of each of the poor weans for a
playock, for she’s a proud spirit, and will bear much
before she complain. Thomas Dowy has been long unable to do
a turn of work, so you may give him a note too. I promised
that donsie body, Willy Shachle, the betherel, that when I got my
legacy, he should get a guinea, which would be more to him than
if the colonel had died at home, and he had had the howking of
his grave; you may therefore, in the meantime, give Willy a
crown, and be sure to warn him well no to get fou with it, for
I’ll be very angry if he does. But what in this
matter will need all your skill, is the giving of the remaining
five pounds to auld Miss Betty Peerie; being a gentlewoman both
by blood and education, she’s a very slimmer affair to
handle in a doing of this kind. But I am persuaded
she’s in as great necessity as many that seem far poorer,
especially since the muslin flowering has gone so down. Her
bits of brats are sairly worn, though she keeps out an apparition
of gentility. Now, for all this trouble, I will give you an
account of what we have been doing since my last.
When we had gotten ourselves made up in order, we went, with
Andrew Pringle, my son, to the counting-house, and had a
satisfactory vista of the residue; but it will be some time
before things can be settled—indeed, I fear, not for months
to come—so that I have been thinking, if the parish was
pleased with Mr. Snodgrass, it might be my duty to my people to
give up to him my stipend, and let him be appointed not only
helper, but successor likewise. It would not be right of me
to give the manse, both because he’s a young and
inexperienced man, and cannot, in the course of nature, have got
into the way of visiting the sick-beds of the frail, which is the
main part of a pastor’s duty, and likewise, because I wish
to die, as I have lived, among my people. But, when
all’s settled, I will know better what to do.
When we had got an inkling from Mr. Argent of what the colonel
has left,—and I do assure you, that money is not to be got,
even in the way of legacy, without anxiety,—Mrs. Pringle
and I consulted together, and resolved, that it was our first
duty, as a token of our gratitude to the Giver of all Good, to
make our first outlay to the poor. So, without saying a
word either to Rachel, or to Andrew Pringle, my son, knowing that
there was a daily worship in the Church of England, we slipped
out of the house by ourselves, and, hiring a hackney conveyance,
told the driver thereof to drive us to the high church of St.
Paul’s. This was out of no respect to the pomp and
pride of prelacy, but to Him before whom both pope and presbyter
are equal, as they are seen through the merits of Christ
Jesus. We had taken a gold guinea in our hand, but there
was no broad at the door; and, instead of a venerable elder,
lending sanctity to his office by reason of his age, such as we
see in the effectual institutions of our own national
church—the door was kept by a young man, much more like a
writer’s whipper-snapper-clerk, than one qualified to fill
that station, which good King David would have preferred to
dwelling in tents of sin. However, we were not come to spy
the nakedness of the land, so we went up the outside stairs, and
I asked at him for the plate; “Plate!” says he;
“why, it’s on the altar!” I should have
known this—the custom of old being to lay the offerings on
the altar, but I had forgot; such is the force, you see, of
habit, that the Church of England is not so well reformed and
purged as ours is from the abominations of the leaven of
idolatry. We were then stepping forward, when he said to
me, as sharply as if I was going to take an advantage, “You
must pay here.” “Very well, wherever it is
customary,” said I, in a meek manner, and gave him the
guinea. Mrs. Pringle did the same. “I cannot
give you change,” cried he, with as little decorum as if we
had been paying at a playhouse. “It makes no
odds,” said I; “keep it all.” Whereupon
he was so converted by the mammon of iniquity, that he could not
be civil enough, he thought—but conducted us in, and showed
us the marble monuments, and the French colours that were taken
in the war, till the time of worship—nothing could surpass
his discretion.
At last the organ began to sound, and we went into the place
of worship; but oh, Mr. Micklewham, yon is a thin kirk.
There was not a hearer forby Mrs. Pringle and me, saving and
excepting the relics of popery that assisted at the
service. What was said, I must, however, in verity confess,
was not far from the point. But it’s still a comfort
to see that prelatical usurpations are on the downfall; no wonder
that there is no broad at the door to receive the collection for
the poor, when no congregation entereth in. You may,
therefore, tell Mr. Craig, and it will gladden his heart to hear
the tidings, that the great Babylonian madam is now, indeed, but
a very little cutty.
On our return home to our lodgings, we found Andrew Pringle,
my son, and Rachel, in great consternation about our
absence. When we told them that we had been at worship, I
saw they were both deeply affected; and I was pleased with my
children, the more so, as you know I have had my doubts that
Andrew Pringle’s principles have not been strengthened by
the reading of the Edinburgh Review. Nothing more
passed at that time, for we were disturbed by a Captain Sabre
that came up with us in the smack, calling to see how we were
after our journey; and as he was a civil well-bred young man,
which I marvel at, considering he’s a Hussar dragoon, we
took a coach, and went to see the lions, as he said; but, instead
of taking us to the Tower of London, as I expected, he ordered
the man to drive us round the town. In our way through the
city he showed us the Temple Bar, where Lord Kilmarnock’s
head was placed after the Rebellion, and pointed out the Bank of
England and Royal Exchange. He said the steeple of the
Exchange was taken down shortly ago—and that the late
improvements at the Bank were very grand. I remembered
having read in the Edinburgh Advertiser, some years past,
that there was a great deal said in Parliament about the state of
the Exchange, and the condition of the Bank, which I could never
thoroughly understand. And, no doubt, the taking own of an
old building, and the building up of a new one so near together,
must, in such a crowded city as this, be not only a great
detriment to business, but dangerous to the community at
large.
After we had driven about for more than two hours, and neither
seen lions nor any other curiosity, but only the outside of
houses, we returned home, where we found a copperplate card left
by Mr. Argent, the colonel’s agent, with the name of his
private dwelling-house. Both me and Mrs. Pringle were
confounded at the sight of this thing, and could not but think
that it prognosticated no good; for we had seen the gentleman
himself in the forenoon. Andrew Pringle, my son, could give
no satisfactory reason for such an extraordinary manifestation of
anxiety to see us; so that, after sitting on thorns at our
dinner, I thought that we should see to the bottom of the
business. Accordingly, a hackney was summoned to the door,
and me and Andrew Pringle, my son, got into it, and told the man
to drive to second in the street where Mr. Argent lived, and
which was the number of his house. The man got up, and away
we went; but, after he had driven an awful time, and stopping and
inquiring at different places, he said there was no such house as
Second’s in the street; whereupon Andrew Pringle, my son,
asked him what he meant, and the man said that he supposed it was
one Second’s Hotel, or Coffee-house, that we wanted.
Now, only think of the craftiness of the ne’er-da-weel; it
was with some difficulty that I could get him to understand, that
second was just as good as number two; for Andrew Pringle, my
son, would not interfere, but lay back in the coach, and was like
to split his sides at my confabulating with the hackney
man. At long and length we got to the house, and were
admitted to Mr. Argent, who was sitting by himself in his library
reading, with a plate of oranges, and two decanters with wine
before him. I explained to him, as well as I could, my
surprise and anxiety at seeing his card, at which he smiled, and
said, it was merely a sort of practice that had come into fashion
of late years, and that, although we had been at his
counting-house in the morning, he considered it requisite that he
should call on his return from the city. I made the best
excuse I could for the mistake; and the servant having placed
glasses on the table, we were invited to take wine. But I
was grieved to think that so respectable a man should have had
the bottles before him by himself, the more especially as he said
his wife and daughters had gone to a party, and that he did not
much like such sort of things. But for all that, we found
him a wonderful conversible man; and Andrew Pringle, my son,
having read all the new books put out at Edinburgh, could speak
with him on any subject. In the course of conversation they
touched upon politick economy, and Andrew Pringle, my son, in
speaking about cash in the Bank of England, told him what I had
said concerning the alterations of the Royal Exchange steeple,
with which Mr. Argent seemed greatly pleased, and jocosely
proposed as a toast,—“May the country never suffer
more from the alterations in the Exchange, than the taking down
of the steeple.” But as Mrs. Pringle is wanting to
send a bit line under the same frank to her cousin, Miss Mally
Glencairn, I must draw to a conclusion, assuring you, that I am,
dear sir, your sincere friend and pastor,
Zachariah
Pringle.
The impression which this letter made on the auditors of Mr.
Micklewham was highly favourable to the Doctor—all bore
testimony to his benevolence and piety; and Mrs. Glibbans
expressed, in very loquacious terms, her satisfaction at the
neglect to which prelacy was consigned. The only person who
seemed to be affected by other than the most sedate feelings on
the occasion was the Rev. Mr. Snodgrass, who was observed to
smile in a very unbecoming manner at some parts of the
Doctor’s account of his reception at St.
Paul’s. Indeed, it was apparently with the utmost
difficulty that the young clergyman could restrain himself from
giving liberty to his risible faculties. It is really
surprising how differently the same thing affects different
people. “The Doctor and Mrs. Pringle giving a guinea
at the door of St. Paul’s for the poor need not make folk
laugh,” said Mrs. Glibbans; “for is it not written,
that whosoever giveth to the poor lendeth to the
Lord?” “True, my dear madam,” replied Mr.
Snodgrass, “but the Lord to whom our friends in this case
gave their money is the Lord Bishop of London; all the collection
made at the doors of St. Paul’s Cathedral is, I understand,
a perquisite of the Bishop’s.” In this the
reverend gentleman was not very correctly informed, for, in the
first place, it is not a collection, but an exaction; and, in the
second place, it is only sanctioned by the Bishop, who allows the
inferior clergy to share the gains among themselves. Mrs.
Glibbans, however, on hearing his explanation, exclaimed,
“Gude be about us!” and pushing back her chair with a
bounce, streaking down her gown at the same time with both her
hands, added, “No wonder that a judgment is upon the land,
when we hear of money-changers in the temple.” Miss
Mally Glencairn, to appease her gathering wrath and holy
indignation, said facetiously, “Na, na, Mrs. Glibbans, ye
forget, there was nae changing of money there. The man took
the whole guineas. But not to make a controversy on the
subject, Mr. Snodgrass will now let us hear what Andrew Pringle,
‘my son,’ has said to him”:—And the
reverend gentleman read the following letter with due
circumspection, and in his best manner:—
