10 MEMOIR OF JOHN WILSON. 



time we reach the manse we are as dry as a whistle — take our scold 

 and our pawmies from the minister — and, by way of punishment 

 and penance, after a little hot whiskey-toddy, with brown sugar and 

 a bit of bun, are bundled off to bed in the daytime !" 



Could any thing be more deliciously vivid than that picture of 

 little Kit and the maternal peaseweep " glowering" at each other 

 in the midst of the Scotch mist ? 



Let us see him now a few years older, and some inches taller, 

 armed with that remarkable piece of artillery, " Muckle-mou'd 

 Meg," of which he has himself given this most inimitable descrip- 

 tion, or one only equalled by Hood's glorious schoolboy epis- 

 tles :— 



" There had been from time immemorial, it was understood, in 

 the Manse, a duck-gun of very great length, and a musket that, 

 according to an old tradition, had been out both in the Fifteen and 

 Forty -rive. There were ten boys of us, and we succeeded by rotation 

 to gun or musket, each boy retaining possession for a single day 

 only ; but then the shooting season continued all the year. They 

 must have been of admirable materials and workmanship ; for 

 neither of them so much as once burst during the Seven Years' War. 

 The musket, who, we have often since thought, must surely rather 

 have been a blunderbuss in disguise, was a perfect devil for kicking 

 when she received her discharge ; so much so, indeed, that it was 

 reckoned creditable for the smaller boys not to be knocked down 

 by the recoil. She had a very wide mouth — and was thought by 

 us ' an awfu' scatterer ;' a qualification which we considered of the 

 very highest merit. She carried any thing we chose to put into 

 her — there still being of all her performances a loud and favorable 

 report — balls, buttons, chuckystanes, slugs, or hail. She had but 

 two faults: she had got addicted, probably in early life, to one 

 habit of burning priming, and to another of hanging fire; habits of 

 which it was impossible, for us at least, to break her by the most 

 assiduous hammering of many a new series of flints ; but such was 

 the high place she justly occupied in the affection and admiration 

 of us all, that faults like these did not in the least detract from her 

 general character. Our delight, when she did absolutely and posi- 

 tively and bond fide ' go off,' was in proportion to the comparative 

 rarity of that occurrence ; and as to hanging fire — why, we used to 

 let her take her own time, contriving to keep her at the level as long 



