Erchie, My Droll Friend. Munro Neil

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       Neil Munro

      Erchie, My Droll Friend

      Published by Good Press, 2019

       [email protected]

      EAN 4064066217174

Table of Contents

       PREFACE.

       ERCHIE

       I INTRODUCTORY TO AN ODD CHARACTER

       II ERCHIE’S FLITTING

       III DEGENERATE DAYS

       IV THE BURIAL OF BIG MACPHEE

       V THE PRODIGAL SON

       VI MRS DUFFY DESERTS HER MAN

       VII CARNEGIE’S WEE LASSIE

       VIII A SON OF THE CITY

       IX ERCHIE ON THE KING’S CRUISE

       X HOW JINNET SAW THE KING

       XI ERCHIE RETURNS

       XII DUFFY’S FIRST FAMILY

       XIII ERCHIE GOES TO A BAZAAR

       XIV HOLIDAYS

       XV THE STUDENT LODGER

       XVI JINNET’S TEA-PARTY

       XVII THE NATIVES OF CLACHNACUDDEN

       XVIII MARY ANN

       XIX DUFFY’S, WEDDING

       XX ON CORPORAL PUNISHMENT

       XXI THE FOLLIES OF FASHION

       XXII ERCHIE IN AN ART TEA-ROOM

       XXIII THE HIDDEN TREASURE

       XXIV THE VALENTEEN

       XXV AMONG THE PICTURES

       XXVI THE PROBATIONARY GHOST

       XXVII JINNET’S CHRISTMAS SHOPPING

       XXVIII A BET ON BURNS

       XXIX THE PRODIGAL’S RETURN

       THE END.

PREFACE.

       Table of Contents

      The majority of the following chapters are selections from “Erchie” articles contributed to the pages of the ‘Glasgow Evening News’ during the past three years. A number of the sketches are now published for the first time.

ERCHIE

       Table of Contents

I INTRODUCTORY TO AN ODD CHARACTER

       Table of Contents

      On Sundays he is the beadle of our church; at other times he Waits. In his ecclesiastical character there is a solemn dignity about his deportment that compels most of us to call him Mr. MacPherson; in his secular hours, when passing the fruit at a city banquet, or when at the close of the repast he sweeps away the fragments of the dinner-rolls, and whisperingly expresses in your left ear a fervent hope that “ye’ve enjoyed your dinner,” he is simply Erchie.

      Once I forgot, deluded a moment into a Sunday train of thought by his reverent way of laying down a bottle of Pommery, and called him Mr. MacPherson. He reproved me with a glance of his eye.

      “There’s nae Mr. MacPhersons here,” said he afterwards; “at whit ye might call the social board I’m jist Erchie, or whiles Easy-gaun Erchie wi’ them that kens me langest. There’s sae mony folks in this world don’t like to hurt your feelings that if I was kent as Mr. MacPherson on this kind o’ job I wadna mak’ enough to pay for starchin’ my shirts.”

      I suppose Mr. MacPherson has been snibbing-in preachers in St. Kentigern’s Kirk pulpit and then going for twenty minutes’ sleep in the vestry since the Disruption; and the more privileged citizens of Glasgow during two or three generations of public dinners have experienced the kindly ministrations of Erchie, whose proud motto is “A flet fit but a warm hert.” I think, however, I was the first to discover his long pent-up and precious strain of philosophy.

      On Saturday nights, in his office as beadle of St. Kentigern’s, he lights the furnaces that take the chill off the Sunday devotions. I found him stoking the kirk fires one Saturday, not very much like a beadle in appearance, and much less like a waiter. It was what, in England, they call the festive season.

      “There’s mair nor guid preachin’ wanted to keep a kirk gaun,” said he; “if I was puttin’ as muckle dross on my fires as the Doctor whiles puts