John Ferguson

“ Amid this earthly pandemonium, John Ferguson and his brother sat down to discuss their meal.
The "fast" style of life, so common among the early settlers in the bush, but now happily dying out, rarely found favour in the eyes of the native youths of the colony; and the Fergusons, having been brought up to entertain an abhorence of such scenes, naturally felt a repugnance to the society into which they now found themselves thrown. Curiosity to see the termination of their companion's orgies, however, detained them in the room ”

“ Odds-blood, an’t I as good a man as Rousterdivel or Lewis Baboon? Though I have not so many game-keepers, yet I have as good clean-made fellows about my farm as he; and if my own children will let me be insulted, it is time that John Bull was gone the way of all flesh.
But what can your children do for you, said they, when your wife, and your nurse, and your steward, will not let one of them touch a gun or a cutlass, and think there is no safety but in the dark cellar, or the coal-hole, when there is any disturbance in the yard. ”

“ Professor John Ferguson
Professor John Ferguson, who recently retired from the Chair of Chemistry at Glasgow University, died at Glasgow on Thursday.
He was educated at Glasgow High School and University, and in 1868 became assistant to the Professor of Chemistry, whom he succeeded six years later. In addition to his distinctions in chemistry he was a well-known archæologist, and was a Fellow of the British Archæeological Society. He was a member of the Royal Company of Archers and an honorary LL.D. of St. ”

“ So, after making what he thought the amende honorable to his cousin; but in reality only doing, as all men do who attempt to explain away some pain-giving remark; that is, adding poignancy to the wounding shaft; he led off his visitor to accompany him round the station.
[Pg 157] In accepting the invitation to sojourn with this family for a few days, we suspect it was something more than the mere desire to wait for his brother, that influenced John Ferguson. ”

“ Just as the procession had advanced to the house of Will Coultart, a troop of ten men rode up. They had evidently been drinking, and spoke not only blasphemously, but in terms of intimidation.—"Stop, you cursed crew," said the leader. "He has escaped law, but he shall not escape justice. Come here, lad;" and at once they alighted from their horses, seized the coffin, and opening the lid, were about to penetrate the corpse through and through. "Stop a little," said John Ferguson, [123] the famous souter of Closeburn; "there are maybe twa at a bargain-making;" ”

“ Ferguson, though a rough soldier, and animated by a zealous partisanship in the royal cause which imbued his feelings with a deep hatred of the Whigs, was also a man of education, and of a disposition to respect the claims of a gentleman fully equal to himself in rank and consideration—even when these qualities were found in an enemy. His intercourse, of late, had been almost entirely confined to the wild spirits who inhabited the frontier, and who, impelled by untamed passions, were accustomed to plunge into every excess which the license of war enabled them to practise. ”

“ I tell you what, says John, if Lewis Baboon had a thousand Cracket-islands of mine, and that he would give me them all for asking his pardon, I would not do it. He is a vile, over-reaching, undermining, treacherous rogue, and there never will be any peace in the neighbourhood, as long as that fair-tongued rascal is out of his grave. Let him come out in his barge again, and I shall meet him; but I know the rascal, he has perpetually some bad design in his head, and when he is found out, he will bow and scrape, and make compliments ”

“ But in the mean time, nobody could tell what was become of John, and all his watermen; whilst Lewis Baboon went vapouring about every where, and did what he pleased. He drove John’s cattle out of Cracket-Island, and took possession of it; although John used to think that nobody could ever dispute islands with him, so ready was he with his barge to relieve them: but the truth upon this occasion was, that John had got into one of these pannics we have mentioned, had applied to Nicholas Frog to no purpose, and actually brought over Rousterdivel, to protect him. ”

“ It would do one good to see, how that fine tall fellow will stop and turn, and do what he is bid.”
“A plague take the woman,” says John, “with her Rousterdivel; do you think that I am a coward, a scoundrel, a beast, a blockhead, a milk-sop, that I must always run for protection to other people? I tell you again, that I am [Pg 70] able to defend myself, and that I have people enow about my house to stand by me.”
“And how do you propose that they should stand by you?” says the nurse: “When Lewis sends over his game-keepers, with their guns and their sabres, who will stand by you then?” ”

“ Accordingly, she lost no time in the morning, but went straight to the parlour, where she found John as busy as ever, talking about the orders he was to give in his house: and having told him her dream, earnestly beseeched him to tell her, whether he had any such intention, with relation to the weavers; for she thought that a person, who had ceased to be guided by her, would stick at nothing.
“The woman is crazy,” says John: “I am only thinking how I may best secure the peace and welfare of my family, and how to keep off rogues; and you ask me, if I am to banish my weavers? ”

“ In short, Jowler went on helter-skelter; and as long as John and his wife were in the humour of paying his bills, he hired all the poachers, game-keepers, and whippers-in in the country, and did not care a farthing for a fellow, unless he could send him off the country, [Pg 93] to do some mischief or other. For this reason he made John get as many game-keepers as possible, but never a word of arming his own children. He made up matters again with Rousterdivel, gave him all he asked, and encouraged him to play the devil in the house of Squire South, John’s old friend. ”

“ All the world knows how long their affairs remained in confusion, merely because they would not employ the same attorney, and what an aversion they had to trust their affairs in common to any single person. Peg would say, “I’ll have nothing to do with John’s lawyers; whoever I employ must mind nobody’s affairs but mine. I have as good a right to be served as he; and if he pays more than I do, let it be for services done to [Pg 4] himself, not for cheating me.” John again would swagger and swear, and said, that whoever Peg employed, must be a dirty lousy fellow ”

“ He was the younger man by twenty years and the more active, if not the more powerful; so that for an instant it seemed to me that the danger was over. But I counted without Ferguson; who leaping back before the other could grapple with him, with a nimbleness beyond his years put the table between them, and levelling the pistol afresh with a snarl of rage, pulled the trigger. ”

“ Why should not I, says he, have a great estate, as well as another? Every body knows, that Lewis did not come honestly by all he has, yet the rogue is never the worse esteemed in the neighbourhood.
Whilst John’s head was busied with these hopeful projects, the news came that Lewis Baboon was coming in earnest. John looked like a person just awake from his first sleep, and made some motions towards the back-door, before he recollected that he had some guns ready in the hall, and that he and his people must be affronted for ever, [Pg 101] if they did not pluck up their spirits. ”

“ She trusted too, that they would remember themselves, and if John or the attorney pretended to cheat them, she talked no less than of beating out both their brains. John was really at bottom a good-natured fellow, and knowing himself to be an overmatch for Peg, did not mind her peevish humours a rush; but he would not have liked her attorney for all that, [Pg 6] if he had not expected to manage him, by keeping him in his own house, and by putting clerks about him, who never had any connexion with Margaret, or her hungry loons, from whom, the truth is, he expected no good. ”

“ If you could keep your own, it was well; if not, it did not signify complaining; two or three stout fellows at your back, a brace of pistols, or a blunderbuss, was a better title to an estate than the best conveyance in the world. Whilst you thought yourself sure of your lands, two or three fellows in the neighbourhood would be disputing who should have it; and of Lord Strutt, Lewis Baboon, Squire South, Nicholas Frog, John Bull himself, and all the gang of them, there was not one to mend another, they did not mind blowing out one another’s brains one farthing ”

“ When my lord had ceased to speak, Ferguson broke into the most fearful imprecations; calling down vengeance not only on others for wrongs done to him, but on his own head if he had ever done aught but what was right; and this rant he so sprinkled with texts of scripture and scraps of the old Covenanters' language that for profanity and blasphemy I never heard the like. The Duke, after watching the exhibition for a time with eyes of pity and reprobation, ended by setting on his hat and turning to the door. ”

“ Such, in fine, was the man who now confronted Ferguson, and with a stern light in his eye bade the schemer stand out. That the latter from the first had intended to declare himself, was as certain as that, now the time had come, he hesitated; awed by the mere power of worth, as I have heard that wicked men calling up spirits from the deep have stood affrighted before the very beings they have summoned. ”

“ That is the true defence,” says Jack, “and let us have it. A game-keeper may be out of the way, but the child of the house is always by his father’s side.” In short, as he was no trifler, so he was seldom idle, when there was any thing of consequence to be done, and never minded whether his opinion was asked or no. He spoke loudly on this occasion, and as he kept a regular correspondence with Sir Thomas, never failed to tell him his mind. Peg herself, who, as we have said, was rather gentle and inoffensive in her ordinary deportment, gave some signs of discontent and vexation ”

“ In January 1757 Ferguson succeeded his friend David Hume in the librarianship of the Advocates' Library, of which the annual salary was 40l., and which he did not hold for a year, having after settling in Edinburgh undertaken the education of Lord Bute's sons. In the probably apocryphal account of the rehearsal of John Home's ‘Douglas’ by notable Edinburgh amateurs, Ferguson is represented as performing the part of Lady Randolph. ”

“ Many odd projects, indeed, were put in his head at this time; such as to turn that garret into a stable and coach-house; to make sister Peg lodge her coals in it, brew her ale, and wash her linen; in short, to make Mr. Luchar himself, besides putting on his breeches, carry up earth, and plant cabbages and turnips upon the leads. It is true, that nothing of all this has been done; but it is not John’s fault, he was at some expence about it, and meant all for the best.
[Pg 48]
CHAP. IV. How John’s affairs had like to have gone to the devil.
We know how difficult a thing it is to write history. ”

“ Mr. Ferguson, I bid you farewell. You have proved yourself a more foolish man than I thought you. A worse you could not. The best I can wish you is that you may never see my face again."
CHAPTER XXIII
My lord, I found, had a coach, without arms or insignia, waiting for him at the Great Turnstile in Holborn; where, if persons recognised him as he alighted, he would be taken to have business with the lawyers in Lincoln's Inn, or at my Lord Somers's in the Fields. Following him to the coach on foot, I never saw a man walk in more deep or anxious thought. ”

“ In an instant every man was at his post, prepared for the enemy. Very soon Colonel Dunlap, with two hundred picked mounted men, sent by Ferguson, fell upon the camp of Clarke. Day had not yet dawned, and the enemy were greatly surprised and disconcerted when they found the Americans fully prepared to meet them. For fifteen minutes the conflict raged desperately in the gloom, when the Tories were repulsed with great slaughter, and the survivors hastened back to Ferguson's camp. ”

“ The man, who had knocked, and who walked in with an impatient step as if the waiting had been little to his taste, was tall and slight; for the rest, a cloak, and a hat flapping low over his face, hid both features and complexion. I noticed that Ferguson bowed again and humbly, but did not address him; and that the gentleman also kept silence until he had seen the door secured behind him. Then, and as his host with seeming clumsiness, brushed past him and so secured a position with his back to the light, he asked sharply, "Where is he?" ”

“ But Charnock in a moment cut him short.
"Mr. Ferguson is so far right," said he, "that if we let this person go to perfect his evidence against us, we shall be very foolish. Clearly, it is to set a premium on treason."
"Then let Mr. Ferguson deal with him," Cassel answered, curtly. "He is his man, and it is his business. I don't lay a hand on him, and that is flat."
"Nor I! Nor I!" cried several, with eagerness. God knows if they thought in their hearts to curry favour with me.
"You are all mad!" Ferguson cried, beating the air. ”

“ Fortunately he did not turn it on me; but for two or three minutes he cursed and swore, bit things and foamed at the mouth, trampled on his wig and raged up and down, like nothing so much as a madman; while the imprecations he uttered against his enemies were so horrible I feared to stay with him. At length it seemed to occur to him that the man who could send such a message to him, Ferguson, the great Ferguson, the Ferguson with a thousand guineas on his head, must be a very great man indeed: which while it consoled him in some measure, excited his curiosity in another and inordinate degree. ”