158 Notes and Sketches. 



stituency, who gave him a ready welcome, and, with 

 the due amount of deliberation and haggling, bought 

 such things as they required. They were respectable 

 men and industrious the chapmen, and at times suc- 

 ceeded, as has been already hinted, in realising sur- 

 prisingly large sums of money comparatively. Here is the 

 obituary notice of an Aberdeenshire chapman, who de- 

 parted this life in January, 1751 : " Last week died, 

 of a short illness, "William Urquhart, a well-known 

 travelling chapman, who, without noise or hurry, with- 

 out horse or packs, without fraud or dishonesty, 

 acquired about .500 sterling, most of which was found 

 in his pockets in bank notes and good bills at his death 

 a singular instance, " adds the chapman's biographer, 

 " of the good effects of sobriety and frugality." . William 

 Urquhart's case had no doubt been a remarkable one in 

 some particulars, though by no means without parallel 

 in the matter of pecuniary results. The chapman, 

 tramping away on his rounds day by day ; and attend- 

 ing the yearly fairs in his district to open out his pack 

 into a " stand" for the day the cooper and mugger 

 taking places alongside of him with their wares-^occa- 

 sionally worked his way to the possession of a well- 

 furnished " chop f the toon ;" and where his ambition 

 did not lead him that way, he frequently amassed what 

 was to him a comfortable competency. An inferior 

 branch was the sale of chapbooks ; -a species of popular 

 literature well enough known so long ago as the time 

 of Swift, who names among the productions of " writers 

 of and for Grub Street" various chap books, such as 

 "The Wise Men of Gotham," which, along with Dougal 

 Graham's "Witty Exploits of Mr. George Buchanan, the 

 King of Scots Fool," and much else of a similar character, 

 found circulation through the medium of itinerants of 

 no great standing, socially or otherwise, who perambu- 

 lated the rural districts and visited fairs and markets, 

 vending their penny chap books and halfpenny ballads, 

 until long after the close of the eighteenth century. 





