All next day, which was Saturday, and, indeed, during the following
week, I stood guard over my notice, enjoying the excitement it produced
and the comments it called forth. It was the advance wave of the
great ocean of civilization which many of them had been glad to leave
behind--some could have wished forever.
To Robert Muir, one of the farmers newly arrived, the notice was a
harbinger of good. It stood for progress, markets and a higher price
for land; albeit he wondered "hoo he wad be keepit up." But his
hard-wrought, quick-spoken little wife at his elbow "hooted" his
scruples and, thinking of her growing lads, welcomed with unmixed
satisfaction the coming of "the meenister." Her satisfaction was shared
by all the mothers and most of the fathers in the settlement; but by the
others, and especially by that rollicking, roistering crew, the Company
of the Noble Seven, the missionary's coming was viewed with varying
degrees of animosity. It meant a limitation of freedom in their wildly
reckless living. The "Permit" nights would now, to say the least, be
subject to criticism; the Sunday wolf-hunts and horse-races, with their
attendant delights, would now be pursued under the eye of the Church,
and this would not add to the enjoyment of them. One great charm of the
country, which Bruce, himself the son of an Edinburgh minister, and now
Secretary of the Noble Seven, described as "letting a fellow do as he
blanked pleased," would be gone.
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