Margaret Oliphant Oliphant

Andrew Ramsay of Errol, by the Author of 'john Arnold'. Margaret Oliphant Oliphant

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1865 edition. Excerpt: ... 167 CHAPTER XIII. One day in the end of autumn of that year, Mr. Chapman sent me over to the Lothian Road, charging me strictly to make haste, and to come back before dusk. I was not much given to loitering, unless when there happened to be any picture shop on the way, or anything particular going on in the street, when, as quite natural, I fancy, I must needs stop to see what it was. However, J never wasted time till I had done the special work I had to do, and never loitered when I had money or things of value of my master's in my keeping. I had still a great deal of the fear of the country boy of town sharpers, and Edinburgh, I had always been led to imagine, was quite full of people who preyed on the thoughtless and unwary. Of course this simplicity was day by day departing, but as yet it was not completely dissipated. That evening I was to bring back a considerable sum of money with me, which caused my master to charge me more strictly than usual to hasten back before dusk. There was then no very inviting road between the place to which I was going and the Lawnmarket. I could dive down one of the closes to the Head of the Cowgate, thence through Bristo Port, and past Heriot's Work; or I could go down the West Bow, and through the West Port, which was, as it happened, the most direct route. Neither way was very delectable, but in those days people paid far less attention to things disagreeable on the streets than they do now; and we put up with the squalor and 'villainous smells of the wynds and closes as things of course--disagreeable, no doubt, but in some sort necessary, at least, quite to be expected. If, with Bailie Nicol Jarvie, we wished for the advantages of the Saut-market, we must put up as we best could with its annoyances...