Frightened out of his wits at last that he would be the death of the whole council, and that more of them would poison themselves, he took up one of the segars--every one knows segars now, for they are fashionable among the very sweeps--which he lighted at the candle, and commenced puffing like a tobacco-pipe. My uncle and the rest, if they were ill before, were worse now; so when they got to the open air, instead of growing better, they grew sicker and sicker, till they were waggling from side to side like ships in a storm; and, not knowing whether their heels or heads were uppermost, went spinning round about like pieries. "A little spark may make muckle wark." It is perfectly wonderful what great events spring out of trifles, or what seem to common eyes but trifles. I do not allude to the nine days' deadly sickness, that was the legacy of every one that ate his segar, but to the awful truth, that, at the next election of councillors, my poor uncle Jamie was completely blackballed--a general spite having been taken to him in the town-hall, on account of having led the magistracy wrong, by doing what he ought to have let alone, thereby making himself and the rest a topic of amusement to the world at large, for many and many a month. Others, to be sure, it becomes me to make mention, have another version of the story, and impute the cause of his having been turned out to the implacable wrath of old Bailie Bogie, whose best black coat, square in the tails, that he had worn only on the Sundays for nine years, was totally spoiled, on their way home in the dark from his lordship's, by a tremendous blash, that my unfortunate uncle happened, in the course of nature, to let flee in the frenzy of a deadly upthrowing. CHAPTER III.--COMING INTO THE WORLD. --At first the babe Was sickly; and a smile was seen to pass Across the midwife's cheek, when, holding up The feeble wretch, she to the father said, "A fine man-child!" What else could they expect? The father being, as I said before, A weaver. HOGG'S _Poetic Mirror_. I have no distinct recollection of the thing myself, yet there is every reason to believe that I was born on the 15th of October 1765, in that little house standing by itself, not many yards from the eastmost side of the Flesh-Market Gate, Dalkeith. My eyes opened on the light about two o'clock in a dark and rainy morning. Long was it spoken about that something great and mysterious would happen on that dreary night; as the cat, after washing her face, went mewing about, with her tail sweeing behind her like a ramrod; and a corbie, from the Duke's woods, tumbled down Jamie Elder's lum, when he had set the little still a-going--giving them a terrible fright, as they all took it first for the devil, and then for an exciseman--and fell with a great cloud of soot, and a loud skraigh, into the empty kail-pot.