SETTLEMENT AT NETHERTON. 131 



tongue. Like the good Bonifaces of the olden days, he did 

 not disdain to sit down with his customers and partake of 

 his own cheer, and then convoy them for some distance on 

 their journey, by way of completing the " entertainment " 

 promised on his sign. In his later years, Davidson became 

 very subject to rheumatism, but nevertheless continued his 

 old attentions to travellers, accompanying them along the 

 road without a coat. When remonstrated with for doing so, 

 on account of this affection, he replied, in his best stutter, 

 that " c-cold was the v-very life o' the room-a-room-attics ; " 

 meaning thereby that it cured them homceopathically, no 

 doubt. 



He was a man of considerable force of character and no 

 little enterprise. In addition to the public-house he kept, 

 he carried on a small grocery, which added to his income. 

 He was also the first to start a stage coach from the Vale 

 of Alford to Aberdeen, about twenty-three miles distant, 

 which ran from his door. This undertaking diminished his 

 possessions, however, and was soon given up, in those days 

 of the universal use of " shank's neggie." * Though he 

 had failed in carrying his neighbours when they could 

 walk, he tried the experiment of carrying them when they 

 could not, by introducing the first hearse ever seen in that 

 part of the country and he succeeded better with the 

 dead than with the living. As an interested party, he 

 wished to anticipate recent fiscal reforms, and drew out a 

 long petition for the repeal of the hated malt tax. This 

 document he submitted, before presentation, to the learned 

 censor of English in the district, the dominie of Coulter- 



* Or the leg horse, or "naig," as the foot in walking is expressed 

 in old Scotch. 



