While Gibbie thus lived in the streets like a townsparrow--as like a human bird without storehouse or barn as boy could well be--the human father of him would all day be sitting in a certain dark court, as hard at work as an aching head and a bloodless system would afford.The said court was off the narrowest part of a long, poverty-stricken street, bearing a name of evil omen, for it was called the Widdiehill--the place of the gallows.It was entered by a low archway in the middle of an old house, around which yet clung a musty fame of departed grandeur and ancient note.In the court, against a wing of the same house, rose an outside stair, leading to the first floor; under the stair was a rickety wooden shed; and in the shed sat the father of Gibbie, and cobbled boots and shoes as long as, at this time of the year, the light lasted.Up that stair, and two more inside the house, he went to his lodging, for he slept in the garret.But when or how he got to bed, George Galbraith never knew, for then, invariably, he was drunk.In the morning, however, he always found himself in it--generally with an aching head, and always with a mingled disgust at and desire for drink.
During the day, alas! the disgust departed, while the desire remained, and strengthened with the approach of evening.All day he worked with might and main, such might and main as he had--worked as if for his life, and all to procure the means of death.No one ever sought to treat him, and from no one would he accept drink.He was a man of such inborn honesty, that the usurping demon of a vile thirst had not even yet, at the age of forty, been able to cast it out.The last little glory-cloud of his origin was trailing behind him--but yet it trailed.Doubtless it needs but time to make of a drunkard a thief, but not yet, even when longing was at the highest, would he have stolen a forgotten glass of whisky; and still, often in spite of sickness and aches innumerable, George laboured that he might have wherewith to make himself drunk honestly.Strange honesty! Wee Gibbie was his only child, but about him or his well-being he gave himself almost as little trouble as Gibbie caused him! Not that he was hard-hearted; if he had seen the child in want, he would, at the drunkest, have shared his whisky with him; if he had fancied him cold, he would have put his last garment upon him; but to his whisky-dimmed eyes the child scarcely seemed to want anything, and the thought never entered his mind that, while Gibbie always looked smiling and contented, his father did so little to make him so.He had at the same time a very low opinion of himself and his deservings, and justly, for his consciousness had dwindled into little more than a live thirst.He did not do well for himself, neither did men praise him; and he shamefully neglected his child; but in one respect, and that a most important one, he did well by his neighbours: he gave the best of work, and made the lowest of charges.In no other way was he for much good.And yet Iwould rather be that drunken cobbler than many a "fair professor,"as Bunyan calls him.A grasping merchant ranks infinitely lower than such a drunken cobbler.Thank God, the Son of Man is the judge, and to him will we plead the cause of such--yea, and of worse than they--for He will do right.It may be well for drunkards that they are social outcasts, but is there no intercession to be made for them--no excuse to be pleaded? Alas! the poor wretches would storm the kingdom of peace by the inspiration of the enemy.Let us try to understand George Galbraith.His very existence the sense of a sunless, dreary, cold-winded desert, he was evermore confronted, in all his resolves after betterment, by the knowledge that with the first eager mouthful of the strange element, a rosy dawn would begin to flush the sky, a mist of green to cover the arid waste, a wind of song to ripple the air, and at length the misery of the day would vanish utterly, and the night throb with dreams.For George was by nature no common man.At heart he was a poet--weak enough, but capable of endless delight.The time had been when now and then he read a good book and dreamed noble dreams.Even yet the stuff of which such dreams are made, fluttered in particoloured rags about his life; and colour is colour even on a scarecrow.
