Pleasures of matrimony (3)/The Bachelor's Miseries

THE

BACHELOR’S MISERIES

Exemplified in the History of

Mess John Magopico.

Magopico was a country dominie, who taught the children the alphabet, and sung Psalms in the Parish Kirk on Sabbath. The vocation of singing inspired him with a taste for poetry, and a he could compose verses for the edification of his neighbours, and for his own satisfaction; a sample of his poetry will make the reader wish for more of the stock.

G-d not a beast, but me did make a man,
And not a Turk, but a true Christian;
His Providence made me a schoolmaster
None of the meaner sort, I do aver.

He was a good lad, and would lay out a little money in purchasing pious hooks from travel ling chapmen. None of your profane Jack the Giant Killer, Lovers’ Garlands, or Wise Men o’ Gotham; but Experiences of Lizie Wast, a Clat o’ Cauld Parritch, Peden’s Prophecies, Satan’s Invisible World, and a Louping-on Stane tor Heavy-arsed Believers. By such pious studies, Magopico obtained a competent knowledge of theology, and an old lady having employed him as her chaplain, he would exa mine the servants, and ask for their notes of the sermon, or let them know the difference between a preaching and a lecture; examine who was the first man, and what he was made of? about the serpent and satan, and the roaring lion, the meekest man, and the wisest man. He examined them on the ten commandments, but observed, at the same time, that they were all a dead letter. After some years spent in this useful vocation, Magopico obtained a kirk, more by the popular voice, and the lady’s influence, than by human learning, and carnal influence. He loved the lady’s chambermaid’s second cousin, and the chambermaid exerted her influence with the old lady. When he had been lodged twelve months in the manse, he found that it was not good for man to be alone, his bed was ill made, his parritch wanted salt, his shoes were not brushed, his shirts wanted buttons, and his black stockings were darned with white thread, his bed dirty, and swarming with fleas, his house in heaps upon heaps, and his meat crammed into the pouches and bellies of every hungry wooer that came after the servants; sheep heads could not be eaten for wool, his broth was singed, his bread mouldy, his tiend lamb scouthered, his butter made into cats’ paws, his cheese was swarming with mites and maggots, and full of holes for the mice to play at hide and seek. Frequent were the admonitions he had given to the maid servants, and was still turning them off, but the last was still the worst. For although his studies had again and again driven him to mountains of thought, and perplexities enough to make any man rin red wud, his ears were deaved and his heart sick with complaints, and turmoil; plain speech and mild admonition had no effect with the servants, who only turned the worse on his hand the longer he wanted a wife; they broke the hinges of anger, the bands of good nature they burst in two, they hated the door of civility, nothing was heard but thunderbolts of reproach, and poor Magopico had to help-mate to soothe or assist him in the midst of his distresses; to attempt to talk to them of working was quite odious; na, na, they maun a’ be ladies. One had a sweetheart and she must have her ears bored; off she sets for that purpose, saying she was gaun to chase the cow frae the corn rigg, so dinner was entirely neglected; another would gossip for whole hours with her neighbours, and her excuse for being so long absent was that she had been mucking the byre, that the grape had broken, and she had to go to the smith to get it mended. Thus they neither were concerned for his pleasure or his profit, and as for any respect to him, it was no more than an old horse had for his father; it was hateful to them to plout their hands in hawkey’s calf’s cog to hack them; the whole of their toil consisted in trimming of their rigging, though their hull was in a leaky condition; thus they would neither work nor stand idle, for their mental capacities were busily employed teaching the arts of laziness and slandering to one another, and how to torture their master, because he was a Bachelor. Thus did they continue to chatter like hungry cranes, and their tongues never lay, so poor Magopico was brought to a most deplorable dish of desolation; hanging his head, like a brewer’s horse at an ale-house door. So at last he resolved to take unto himself a wife, to scold the servants, and darn his stockings, balance the accounts of the housemaid, and to dress his shirt and wig, and to enjoy all the fifteen pleasures of Matrimony.

FINIS.