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Kay's Originals Vol. 1

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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 291 all his attention, and week after week he used to travel from Kinross to Edinburgh (a distance of twenty-seven miles) to inquire about the progress of his law-suit. Eay relates that when the Print was published in 1802, no fewer than one hundred and sixteen subscribers were obtained among the gentlemen of the legal profession-so well acquainted were they with the proprietor of the middenstead. The result of this appetite for law on the part of poor Andrew was the total neglect of his business at Kinross. His affairs consequently went to ruin, and the unfortunate litigant died in the jail of Cupar, in 1817, where he had been incarcerated for debt, No. CXIX. THREE LEGAL DEVOTEES. ANDREW NICOL, MARY WALKER, AND JOHN SKENE. THIS is allowed by some to be one of the best of Kay’s etchings. ANDREW NICOL, whom we have noticed in the preceding page, may here be supposed newly arrived from Kinross with the plan of his middenstead. His simple face and genuine Lowland garb are well depicted ; and the credulous attention with which he is listening to the Heckler is truly characteristic. MARY WALKER, whose vacant countenance indicates insanity, was an intolerable pest about the Parliament House. The object of her legal solicitude was the recovery of a sum of money which she conceived to be due her by the Magistrates of Edinburgh. JOHN SKENE-the smart, consequential - looking personage in black, engaged in expounding some knotty point to the Kinross litigant-was an individual whose brains, to use the expression of Major Campbell, were pretty considerably “ conglomerated.” He was a flax-dresser, hence his soubriquet of the Heckler; but this plebeian avocation was with him a matter of secondary consideration, as he conceived he was commissioned to hold two situations of the highest importance in the country, viz.-Superintendent of the Court of Session, and of the General Assembly. The way he found leisure to fulfil the high duties he thus imposed on himself was not a little remarkable. He worked nearly all night at the dressing of flax-only retiring to rest for an hour or two towards morning. He then rose, and, having arrayed himself in the clerical style represented in the Print, proceeded to the Parliament House, with all the
Volume 8 Page 409
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