Mr. Livesey at once seized the word, and, rising, proposed it as the
name of the society. The proposition was received with enthusiastic
cheering, and these "root and branch" temperance men were thenceforward
known as teetotalers. Richard remained all his life a sturdy advocate of
the cause, and when he died, in 1846, I made one of the hundreds and
thousands that crowded the streets of the beautiful town of Preston and
followed him to his grave. The stone above it chronicles shortly his
name and death, and the fact that he was the author of a word known now
wherever Christianity and civilization are known.
MARGARET SINCLAIR'S SILENT MONEY.
"It was ma luck, Sinclair, an' I couldna win by it."
"Ha'vers! It was David Vedder's whiskey that turned ma boat
tapsalteerie, Geordie Twatt."
"Thou had better blame Hacon; he turned the boat _Widdershins_ an' what
fule doesna ken that it is evil luck to go contrarie to the sun?"
"It is waur luck to have a drunken, superstitious pilot. Twatt, that
Norse blood i' thy veins is o'er full o' freets. Fear God, an' mind thy
wark, an' thou needna speir o' the sun what gate to turn the boat."
"My Norse blood willna stand ony Scot stirring it up, Sinclair. I come
o' a mighty kind--"
"Tush, man! Mules mak' an unco' full about their ancestors having been
horses. It has come to this, Geordie: thou must be laird o' theesel'
before I'll trust thee again with ony craft o' mine." Then Peter
Sinclair lifted his papers, and, looking the discharged sailor steadily
in the face, bid him "go on his penitentials an' think things o'er a
bit."
Geordie Twatt went sullenly out, but Peter was rather pleased with
himself; he believed that he had done his duty in a satisfactory manner.
And if a man was in a good temper with himself, it was just the kind of
even to increase his satisfaction. The gray old town of Kirkwall lay in
supernatural glory, the wondrous beauty of the mellow gloaming blending
with soft green and rosy-red spears of light that shot from east to
west, or charged upward to the zenith. The great herring fleet outside
the harbor was as motionless as "a painted _fleet_ upon a painted
ocean"--the men were sleeping or smoking upon the piers--not a foot fell
upon the flagged streets, and the only murmur of sound was round the
public fountains, where a few women were perched on the bowl's edge,
knitting and gossiping.
Peter Sinclair was, perhaps, not a man inclined to analyze such things,
but they had their influence over him; for, as he drifted slowly home in
his skiff, he began to pity Geordie's four motherless babies, and to
wonder if he had been as patient with him as he might have been. "An'
yet," he murmured, "there's the loss on the goods, an' the loss o' time,
and the boat to steek afresh forbye the danger to life! Na, na, I'm no
called upon to put life i' peril for a glass o' whiskey."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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