THE WILL IS THE MAN. 211 and what not-few noo believe even in the Brownie o' Bodsbeck. North. Now, my dear friends, pardon the anxiety of an old man for the children growing up round his feet. Shepherd. The rising generation, about to shoot up into saints or sinners! Tickler. Wheesht, James! Shepherd. Wheesht yoursel! North. Education must now form the two-Will and Intellect-one with and by the other-or Education is lame, with one hand only, and, I fear, that the left. Shepherd. Whulk ? Tickler. Wheesht ! North. Intellect does everything, or nearly, for Will, and Will everything for Intellect. But which is the ultimate object? Will, certainly. The Will is the Man. Shepherd. Hear it-a' ye nations-the Will is the Man! North. Our idea of education is too frequently one of schools and colleges, drawn thence, and formed upon them; but how small a part! Shepherd. Sma' pairt indeed. North. The roots of the Will are in the body-and the roots of Intellect in the Will. Shepherd. In the body! North. Yes, James, in the body. See how the state of the affections-which are Will-nourish even imagination, and how imagination acts into the purely intellectual faculties-and what vivacity mere health and joy will give to the memory, who, you know, in the olden time was called the mother of the Muses. Shepherd. Sae, indeed, she was-Mymoshuny. North. What, I ask you, James, can a listless child learn, an unwilling child understand? Shepherd. Naething. North. Will not a boy, whose heart is full of poetry, learn Greek in Homer, by the force of poetry, though he has a bad talent for languages? Shepherd. Nae dout-nae dout. I sune learnt Erse in Ossian. North. Will not thought and feeling make him a good speaker and writer at last, though he could never understand his grammar? 212 THE GLASGOW GANDER. Shepherd. Confoond grammar! North. The first thing is that the understanding grow in the Will, and the Will up through the heart of the understanding, and an Intellect of ten or twelve years old, may, so far, have been powerfully educated without a single lesson. Shepherd. Mine was yedicated sae-whether poo'rfully or no, it's no for me to be tellin. [Timepiece strikes Twelve- and enter AMBROSE, bending under his load, with his Tail and Supper. North. Timothy-James-run to the support of mine host -or he faints and falls. [The ARCADIAN and SOUTHSIDE reach AMBROSE just in time to prevent his sinking to the floor. Ambrose. Thank ye, gentlemen; this burden is beyond my strength. North. What is it? Ambrose. The GLASGOW GANDER, sir.1 North. The great prize Glasgow gander! Rash man! even for one moment to have dreamt of bearing him in singlehanded. Shepherd. Mair strength! mair strength! Tappy, King Pip, Sir Dawvit! The Pech. Coming, sir. North. Let me give a lift. [By the united exertions of the Knights, and of the Household, the great Glasgow Gander is at last deposited, with some loss of gravy, on the table. Tickler. How it groans! Shepherd. What! the gander? Tickler. No, the quadruped under him—the table. Shepherd. Props, Awmrose-props! Ambrose. The timbers are all sound, gentlemen, and now that they have stood the first shock of the Shepherd. I'se uphaud them for a croon. pressure Tickler. It is not the legs of the table I tremble for, but the joists of the floor. Shepherd. Wha's aneath? Ambrose. The coffee-room, sir. North. Why, Mr Ambrose, in case of any accident, it might be a serious business; for, to say nothing of the deaths of so 1 See ante, vol. ii. p. 30, note 2. ANECDOTES OF GANDERS. 213 many unoffending, yet I fear, unprepared individuals, actions of damages, at the instance of the relatives of the deceased, might be brought against us, the survivors Shepherd. Na, na-only again' the relatives o' the gander, and wha ever heard o' legal proceedings again' a flock o' geese? North. Hush! did no one hear something creaking? Tickler. Only a coach rattling down Leith Walk. Let us be seated. North. Well, I had heard from several persons of credit who had seen him on his walk, that he was like the cow that swallowed Tom Thumb, "larger than the largest size;" but he out-Herods Herod-I should rather say, out-Goliaths Goliath. Tickler. I am surprised his owner, instead of selling him, did not put him into a show. "Twould have made his fortune. Shepherd. Wha'll cut him up? Shepherd. Awmrose, you should hae sent an order to Brummagem for a knife on purpose. North. Perhaps the usual instrument will do. How hot he is! Shepherd. Let him cool, while we help ourselves to caulkers. [They help themselves to Caulkers till the Gander cools. North. A Gander is an amiable bird. You know, that while his wife, the Goose, whose duty it is to sit in general, on any particular occasion takes to her waddlers, her husband, the Gander, drops down with his doup on the eggs, and broods over them in the most maternal manner imaginable, looking fully as like a lady as a gentleman. Tickler. He is apt, however, by the inferior heat resident in his dolp, to addle the eggs, or to vivify them into goslings that bear little analogy to the parent pair. Shepherd. A feather-bed micht hae been made-I howp has been made-frae the fleece o' the feather'd fule-though I suspeck the smell may prove onything but soporific. The pluckins o' toon geese bring naething like the pund-wecht, compared to them that's bred in the kintra. They're sae coorse -ye see-and seldom or never sweet. North. Our friend on the table is tame-but of wild geese I have heard many well-authenticated anecdotes, that denote prudence apparently beyond the reach of mere instinct. They 214 A LEGACY-HUNTING GANDER. are sensible that a disposition to gabble is one of their weak points; and, on taking a flight through the air infested by eagles, or other birds of prey, they all provide themselves, each with a chucky-stane in his mouth, to hinder the proprietor thereof from betraying their transit to the enemy.1 Could our poor fat friend, think ye, have been up to that stratagem, to silence and save himself in extremity? Shepherd. No he. He would hae lettin the chucky drap frae his bill, preferring being gutted to nae gabble. Tickler. A gander walking by a pond wi' a chucky-stane in his bill, reminds the classical scholar of Demosthenes on the sea-shore. Shepherd. Haw-haw-haw !-curin himsel o' an impediment in his quack. North. How is he now? Still, like Tailor's goose, hot and hissing. Tickler. Let us put him into ice. Where's the bucket? Shepherd. Dinna disturb again the haill househald. North. I once knew a gander, James, that, regularly every Sabbath, for several years, conducted an old blind woman to the kirk. Tickler. Hypocrite! to be remembered in her will. North. Residuary legatee. Tickler. Our fat friend on the table, I fear, was no churchgoer. Shepherd. I've kent ganders make capital watch-dowgs after a lang 'prenticeship. Tickler. The most unaccountable fowl at first sight I remember ever to have witnessed, had the reputation in the parish of being the joint production of a gander and a duck. Shepherd. What a squatter! 2 North. A gander, in the sporting circles, would be backed at odds, in pedestrianism, against a bubbly. For half a mile, the bubbly, being longer in the spald, would outstep the gander, and probably reach the goal before him by half-an-hour. But let them travel from morn till dewy eve, and the bubbly at sunset uniformly goes to roost, while the gander, being of a more wakeful genius, waddles on, and by moonlight laughs to behold his competitor sound asleep in a tree. 1 This anecdote rests on the authority of Plutarch and Elian. Modern naturalists will probably not vouch for it. 2 Spald-limb. Tickler. Our gander could not have done at last six yards an hour; for, like Hamlet, he was "fat and scant of breath." Shepherd. Like Hamlet! North. The gander, noble bird as he is, and stately, lives and dies without ever having taken to himself, either scientifically or empirically, his own altitude; so that, high as he holds his head in reality, 'tis not so high, by an immeasurable difference, as in his own towering imagination. Tickler. I admire him most when, with bill hissing earthwards, and hinder-end affronting heaven, he expresses his scorn of the whole human race-like Timon of Athens. North. In that posture he is, I grant, impressive; but surely sublimer far is the gander majestically stooping his forehead, as he walks under a gateway, some thirty feet high, considerate of the crown of the arch. What a union of dignity and condescension ! Tickler. Ay, every inch a king. North. I remember seeing a gander on the morning of the day our late gracious King visited Dalkeith Palace, eyeing the triumphal arch which loyalty had erected at the entrance of those beautiful grounds and gardens, all greenly garlanded for the sovereign approach. He never doubted for a single moment that the pomp was all in honour of him-that to see him was gathered together that great multitude. The rushing of chariots was heard, the tramp of cavalry, and the blare of trumpets-and ten thousand voices cried "The King! The King!" The gander-prouder far than George the Fourthwhom he despised-at that instant waddled under the archdown went the head, and up went the dolp of the despot "While unextinguished laughter shook the skies!" Tickler. A few years ago, North, you will remember that a luminous arch-probably electrical-spanned the starry heavens. A gander of my acquaintance, sleepless mayhap in unrequited love, I met on a common, in the moonlight seeming a swan—and indeed, in their own estimation, all geese are The heavenly apparition attracted his eye "in a fine frenzy rolling," and from the enthusiasm that characterised his whole manner, it was manifest that he opined erroneously, I should suppose, that the Wonder whose span and altitude at that moment philosophers were computing, had been flung swans. |