IN A SCOTS VILLAGE

Evening Post, Volume XCI, Issue 143, 17 June 1916, Page 10

IN A SCOTS VILLAGE

THE TICKET COLLECTOR

"THEY THREW O'ER THE KING."

Prom where I stood I «aw the door open, and a woman holding it with shaking hand. They had brought her home her 6on, writes a special correspondent of the Scotsman.

It was before my time, and I only heard in broken and disjointed sentence's, separated by long intervals, how the look of tragedy had come into the eyes of the widow, who lived alone with her son in the cottage that in the summer is smothered in crimson ramblers at the corner .where the road strikes off sharply towards the hills. She had but one purpose—to save her son from that which had emptied and darkened her own life. If some called him a prig, he grew up manly and fearless withal.

THE WIDOW'S SON.

When the call of duty came, he was among the first who went,forth from our parish to place his life •as a barrier between his country and destruction, and when the day of testing came, he played the man. From hospital he came home, ere returning again to the fight. And every night since he arrived it had been like this.. For a "grateful country took the widow's son, and in the hour of weariness and desolation surrounded him with temptation. When fatigue ached every limb, the country for which he was giving his young1 life said to him, " Here is the .remedy; drink and forget." He succumbed to the allurements wherewith the State begirt him. Heredity awoke in him, nnd he became this—the khakiclad, unbuttoned figure that leans there against the door-post, looking with bleared, unseeing eye, and his hand ready to strike that which be loved best on earth.

" I gave him to my country " moaned the woman with the white-drawn face and frightened eyes; " s^i this is what they have made of him." She places Mm on a chair against tho wall, and with trembling hands tries to unloose his boots. He slips down on th« floor and lies inert. Outside the little gfoup tnrn away ar.d cross the road with unsteady feet. One stumbles on the stone steps," and there is a thud, and an outburst of blasphemy. And then, as they get loweT, there rises the hoarse melody, " Keep the home, fires burning."

You may perhaps remember how the ticket-collector and myself became teetotalers a long weary while ago, when the war broke'out. It seemed the right thing to do; and it sort of introduced us ' into noble society, numbering us with 'kings. and emperors. But the sad confession must be made that we have failed.

"Ye see," explained the ticket-col-lector, "it was this way. I thoct the waur wud be ower in four months. Wha wud has thocht o' twa years 1 I cud hae continued four months —but twa years! It was fair reediculous. The spirit was wiUin'."

"COME AND DRINK."

I suggested to him that the need was greater now; that every shilling spent needlessly Helped the Germans; that every sixpence should he saved for the war loans; and .that only one thing r/as to be thought of—economy, economy. We stood on the empty platform, and the wind was whistling beneath the arches of the bridge that ■ spans the valley. . x_

"That's, jist nonsense," exclaimed the ticket-collector, pushing back his peaked cap. " Surely the Government o' 'this country, wise and noble man, .know what is what; and, malm, where'er I turn, the Government says to me, ' Come and drink: don't you be a fool of a, teatotaler.'

"Ye said, yerself that ' teetotaler' was N aji ugJy word; and Maister Asquith agrees wi' ye. Let ,me turn east and cross the bridge (and ho waved his hand towards the arches), and at the other end ths Government meets me with twa pubs and says, ' Come, spend your money and drink'; and as if that were not enough, the Government meets the woman and me with twa licensed grocers and says to us—'Tak' it hanie wi' ye; dinna spare your money when the good liquor is waiting ye.' If I turn wast, every two or three hundred yards after you pass the villas, the Government keeps open a pub.—a pub.' and a licensed grocer turn about. And yonder down in Sodom and the cities of the plain every corner reeks wi' them. "Mahn, I.canna' go for a walk without the Government meetin' me and sayin', 'Come and drink!' The only way I can escape frae the Government alluring, me to drink is to tak' to the hills!"

THE SAVING CAMPAIGN.

And the ticket-collector stretched a gaunt arm towards the snow-clad hills and shivered. ■

"Ye wadna, has me tak' to the hills hi weather like this?" said he plaintively.

" But they -want you also to save every penny," I rejoined. "That canna be," replied the. ticket-collecter; "for they meet me wherever I turn, inviting me to drink. Mahn, they threw ower tne King himself when he wanted them to stop it, and they said," 'We'll just go on drinking and inviting everybody to drink as usual.' "

" They shortened • the hours," I replied; "that stows tSey want you to save your money."

" Does it?" replied th« ticket-col-lector; "ye ken weel, it means no such thing. What'they say is,. 'Instead of hauf a gless .we advise you to buy a bottle at a time.' And the folk do so. For every ' hauf ' drunk before, twa are drunk nop. Before it was only the man j noo it's the man and the wife and the children with twa bottles between them —drunk as a lord every Saturday niglit and a' Sunday." .

The ticket-collector shivered in the icy wind that came whistling' under the arches.