The ministers in the town did not hold with literature. When the most notorious of the clubs met in the town-house under the presidentship of Gravia Ogilvy, who was no better than a poacher, and was troubled in his mind because writers called Pope a poet, there was frequently a wrangle¹ over the question, “Is literature necessarily immoral²?” It was a fighting club, and on Friday nights the few respectable, God-fearing members dandered to the town-house, as if merely curious to have another look at the building. If Lang Tammas, who was dead against letters, was in sight they wandered off, but when there were no spies abroad they slunk up the stair. The attendance was greatest on dark nights, though Gavin himself and some other characters would have marched straight to the meeting in broad daylight. Tammas Haggart, who did not think much of Milton's devil, had married a gypsy woman for an experiment, and the Coat of Many Colors did not know where his wife was. As a rule, however, the members were wild bachelors. When they married they had to settle down.  
Gavin's essay on Will'um Pitt, the Father of the Taxes, led to the club's being bundled out of the town-house, where people said it should never have been allowed to meet. There was a terrible towse when Tammas Haggart then disclosed the secret of Mr. Byars' supposed approval of the club. Mr. Byars was the Auld³ Licht minister whom Mr. Dishart succeeded, and it was well known that he had advised the authorities to grant the use of the little town-house to the club on Friday evenings. As he solemnly warned his congregation against attending the meetings, the position he had taken up created talk, and Lang Tammas called at the manse with Sanders Whamond to remonstrate⁴. The minister, however, harangued⁵ them on their sinfulness in daring to question the like of him, and they had to retire vanquished⁶ though dissatisfied. Then came the disclosures of Tammas Haggart, who was never properly secured by the Auld Lichts until Mr. Dishart took him in hand. It was Tammas who wrote anonymous⁷ letters to Mr. Byars about the scarlet⁸ woman, and, strange to say, this led to the club's being allowed to meet in the town-house. The minister, after many days, discovered who his correspondent was, and succeeded in inveigling⁹ the stone-breaker to the manse. There, with the door snibbed, he opened out on Tammas, who, after his usual manner when hard pressed, pretended to be deaf. This sudden fit of deafness so exasperated¹⁰ the minister that he flung a book at Tammas. The scene that followed was one that few Auld Licht manses can have witnessed. According to Tammas, the book had hardly reached the floor when the minister turned white. Tammas picked up the missile. It was a Bible. The two men looked at each other. Beneath the window Mr. Byars' children were prattling¹¹. His wife was moving about in the next room, little thinking what had happened. The minister held out his hand for the Bible, but Tammas shook his head, and then Mr. Byars shrank into a chair. Finally, it was arranged that if Tammas kept the affair to himself the minister would say a good word to the bailie about the literary club. After that the stone-breaker used to go from house to house, twisting his mouth to the side and remarking that he could tell such a tale of Mr. Byars as would lead to a split in the kirk. When the town-house was locked on the club Tammas spoke¹² out, but though the scandal ran from door to door, as I have seen a pig in a fluster¹³ do, the minister did not lose his place. Tammas preserved the Bible, and showed it complacently¹⁴ to visitors as the present he got from Mr. Byars. The minister knew this, and it turned his temper sour. Tammas' proud moments, after that, were when he passed the minister.
 
Driven from the town-house, literature found a table with forms round it in a tavern¹⁵ hard by, where the club, lopped of its most respectable members, kept the blinds down and talked openly of Shakespeare. It was a low-roofed room, with pieces of lime hanging from the ceiling and peeling walls. The floor had a slope that tended to fling the debater forward, and its boards, lying loose on an uneven¹⁶ foundation, rose and looked at you as you crossed the room. In winter, when the meetings were held regularly every fortnight, a fire of peat, sod, and dross¹⁷ lit up the curious company who sat round the table shaking their heads over Shelley's mysticism, or requiring to be called to order because they would not wait their turn to deny an essayist's assertion, that Berkeley's style was superior to David Hume's. Davit Hume, they said, and Watty Scott. Burns was simply referred to as Rob or Robbie.
 
There was little drinking at these meetings, for the members knew what they were talking about, and your mind had to gallop¹⁸ to keep up with the flow of reasoning. Thrums is rather a remarkable¹⁹ town. There are scores and scores of houses in it that have sent their sons to college (by what a struggle!), some to make their way to the front in their professions, and others, perhaps, despite their broadcloth, never to be a patch on their parents. In that literary club there were men of a reading so wide and catholic that it might put some graduates of the universities to shame, and of an intellect so keen that had it not had a crook²⁰ in it their fame would have crossed the county. Most of them had but a threadbare existence, for you weave slowly with a Wordsworth open before you, and some were strange Bohemians (which does not do in Thrums), yet others wandered into the world and compelled it to recognize them. There is a London barrister whose father belonged to the club. Not many years ago a man died on the staff of the Times, who, when he was a weaver²¹ near Thrums, was one of the club's prominent members. He taught himself shorthand by the light of a cruizey, and got a post on a Perth paper, afterward²² on the Scotsman and the Witness, and finally on the Times. Several other men of his type had a history worth reading, but it is not for me to write. Yet I may say that there is still at least one of the original members of the club left behind in Thrums to whom some of the literary dandies might lift their hats.
 
Gavin Ogilvy I only knew as a weaver and a poacher: a lank²³, long-armed man, much bent²⁴ from crouching²⁵ in ditches whence he watched his snares²⁶. To the young he was a romantic figure, because they saw him frequently in the fields with his call-birds tempting²⁸ siskins, yellow yites, and Unties²⁹ to twigs³⁰ which he had previously³¹ smeared³² with lime. He made the lime from the tough roots of holly³³; sometimes from linseed, oil, which is boiled until thick, when it is taken out of the pot and drawn³⁴ and stretched with the hands like elastic³⁵. Gavin was also a famous hare-snarer at a time when the ploughman looked upon this form of poaching as his perquisite³⁶. The snare²⁷ was of wire, so constructed that the hare entangled³⁷ itself the more when trying to escape, and it was placed across the little roads through the fields to which hares confine themselves, with a heavy stone attached to it by a string. Once Gavin caught a toad³⁸ (fox) instead of a hare, and did not discover his mistake until it had him by the teeth. He was not able to weave for two months. The grouse-netting was more lucrative³⁹ and more exciting, and women engaged in it with their husbands. It is told of Gavin that he was on one occasion chased by a game-keeper over moor⁴⁰ and hill for twenty miles, and that by and by when the one sank down exhausted⁴¹ so did the other. They would sit fifty yards apart, glaring at each other. The poacher eventually escaped. This, curious as it may seem, is the man whose eloquence⁴² at the club has not been forgotten in fifty years. “Thus did he stand,” I have been told recently, “exclaiming in language sublime⁴³ that the soul shall bloom in immortal⁴⁵ youth through the ruin and wrack⁴⁶ of time.”
 
Another member read to the club an account of his journey to Lochnagar, which was afterward published in Chambers's Journal. He was celebrated⁴⁷ for his descriptions of scenery, and was not the only member of the club whose essays got into print. More memorable⁴⁸ perhaps was an itinerant⁴⁹ match-seller known to Thrums and the surrounding towns as the literary spunk-seller. He was a wizened⁵⁰, shivering old man, often barefooted, wearing at the best a thin, ragged⁵¹ coat that had been black but was green-brown with age, and he made his spunks as well as sold them. He brought Bacon and Adam Smith into Thrums, and he loved to recite long screeds from Spenser, with a running commentary on the versification and the luxuriance of the diction. Of Jamie's death I do not care to write. He went without many a dinner in order to buy a book.
 
The Coat of Many Colors and Silva Robbie were two street preachers who gave the Thrums ministers some work. They occasionally appeared at the club. The Coat of Many Colors was so called because he wore a garment consisting of patches of cloth of various colors sewed together. It hung down to his heels. He may have been cracked rather than inspired, but he was a power in the square where he preached, the women declaring that he was gifted by God. An awe⁵² filled even the men when he admonished⁵³ them for using strong language, for at such a time he would remind them of the woe⁵⁴ which fell upon Tibbie Mason. Tibbie had been notorious in her day for evil-speaking, especially for her free use of the word handless, which she flung............