My old friend and adversary, Bailie M'Lucre, being now a man well
stricken in years, was one night, in going home from a gavawlling
with some of the neighbours at Mr Shuttlethrift's, the
manufacturer's, (the bailie, canny man, never liket ony thing of the
sort at his own cost and outlay,) having partaken largely of the
bowl, for the manufacturer was of a blithe humour--the bailie, as I
was saying, in going home, was overtaken by an apoplexy just at the
threshold of his own door, and although it did not kill him
outright, it shoved him, as it were, almost into the very grave; in
so much that he never spoke an articulate word during the several
weeks he was permitted to doze away his latter end; and accordingly
he died, and was buried in a very creditable manner to the
community, in consideration of the long space of time he had been a
public man among us.

But what rendered the event of his death, in my opinion, the more
remarkable, was, that I considered with him the last remnant of the
old practice of managing the concerns of the town came to a period.
For now that he is dead and gone, and also all those whom I found
conjunct with him, when I came into power and office, I may venture
to say, that things in yon former times were not guided so
thoroughly by the hand of a disinterested integrity as in these
latter years. On the contrary, it seemed to be the use and wont of
men in public trusts, to think they were free to indemnify
themselves in a left-handed way for the time and trouble they
bestowed in the same. But the thing was not so far wrong in
principle as in the hugger-muggering way in which it was done, and
which gave to it a guilty colour, that, by the judicious stratagem
of a right system, it would never have had. In sooth to say,
through the whole course of my public life, I met with no greater