For a long period of time, I had observed that there was a gradual mixing in of the country gentry among the town's folks.This was partly to be ascribed to a necessity rising out of the French Revolution, whereby men of substance thought it an expedient policy to relax in their ancient maxims of family pride and consequence;and partly to the great increase and growth of wealth which the influx of trade caused throughout the kingdom, whereby the merchants were enabled to vie and ostentate even with the better sort of lairds.The effect of this, however, was less protuberant in our town than in many others which I might well name, and the cause thereof lay mainly in our being more given to deal in the small way;not that we lacked of traders possessed both of purse and perseverance; but we did not exactly lie in the thoroughfare of those mighty masses of foreign commodities, the throughgoing of which left, to use the words of the old proverb, "goud in goupins"with all who had the handling of the same.Nevertheless, we came in for our share of the condescensions of the country gentry; and although there was nothing like a melting down of them among us, either by marrying or giving in marriage, there was a communion that gave us some insight, no overly to their advantage, as to the extent and measure of their capacities and talents.In short, we discovered that they were vessels made of ordinary human clay; so that, instead of our reverence for them being augmented by a freer intercourse, we thought less and less of them, until, poor bodies, the bit prideful lairdies were just looked down upon by our gawsie big-bellied burgesses, not a few of whom had heritable bonds on their estates.But in this I am speaking of the change when it had come to a full head; for in verity it must be allowed that when the country gentry, with their families, began to intromit among us, we could not make enough of them.Indeed, we were deaved about the affability of old crabbit Bodle of Bodletonbrae, and his sister, Miss Jenny, when they favoured us with their company at the first inspection ball.I'll ne'er forgot that occasion; for being then in my second provostry, I had, in course of nature, been appointed a deputy lord-lieutenant, and the town-council entertaining the inspecting officers, and the officers of the volunteers, it fell as a duty incumbent on me to be the director of the ball afterwards, and to the which I sent an invitation to the laird and his sister little hoping or expecting they would come.But the laird, likewise being a deputy lord-lieutenant, he accepted the invitation, and came with his sister in all the state of pedigree in their power.Such a prodigy of old-fashioned grandeur as Miss Jenny was!--but neither shop nor mantuamaker of our day and generation had been the better o't.She was just, as some of the young lasses said, like Clarissa Harlowe, in the cuts and copperplates of Mrs Rickerton's set of the book, and an older and more curious set than Mrs Rickerton's was not in the whole town; indeed, for that matter, I believe it was the only one among us, and it had edified, as Mr Binder the bookseller used to say, at least three successive generations of young ladies, for he had himself given it twice new covers.We had, however, not then any circulating library.But for all her antiquity and lappets, it is not to be supposed what respect and deference Miss Jenny and her brother, the laird, received--nor the small praise that came to my share, for having had the spirit to invite them.
The ball was spoken of as the genteelest in the memory of man, although to my certain knowledge, on account of the volunteers, some were there that never thought to mess or mell in the same chamber with Bodletonbrae and his sister, Miss Jenny.
