Perthshire in bygone days

GEOEGE PENNY. 235.
at his office in the " King's Arms " Close; and during the
writhings of the Eeform Bill, and the great political changes
which ensued, he struggled on with it to the end of his
life. A relative of Taylor's invented a machine for printing
the paper, the principle of which was good, and the work
it made, very fair ; but it had been, at first, imperfectly
constructed, and was consequently continually breaking
down. Hogarth has no better picture than could have
been often seen in those days at the Advertiser office on
publishing-day — Taylor covered with ink, struggling amidst
a labyrinth of wheels, flaps, and threads, fretting, despair-
ing, cursing, not loud but deep ; and Penny, with a nose
like an illuminated carbuncle, holding a dripping, heart-
broken, tallow-candle away into the vortex of the tangled
thicket. One of the proprietors, during a contested election,
called it " Taylor's Infernal Machine."
Penny's normal position was to stand at the desk and
answer eager applicants for "the paper," "No min, it's
no' ready, but it is in the press," and when the press took the
pet, he had to be ready with the broken-hearted tallow-candle.
Another string tied, another wheel tightened up, and the
business recommenced, Penny emerged from the inter-
woven skein, majestic as a spider who finds his web perfect,
and handed out the accomplished fact, remarking apolo-
getically, "Hoorne's foshen in a motion," or, " Ebrington
has stopped the supplies," or some such news as he thought
likely to soften the acerbities of the devouring politicians,
who had been waiting for hours, and he had no objections
whatever that you should, in your own mind, connect in
some mysterious way the temporary stoppage of the paper
with the stoppage of the supplies, or any other important
movement within the walls of the reformed St. Stephen's.
In 1835, when Sir George Murray and Mr. Fox Maule
contested the county, an incident occurred at the Advertiser
office which went too far for the Whigs and stopped too
short for the Tories. "When the country papers were
being despatched, Mr. George Gardiner rushed frantically
into the office and shouted, " Stop the press ! for Godsake
stop the press !" Penny stood paralysed, thinking for the
moment that William the Fourth had been assassinated, or
the Houses of Parliament blown up. But the " sailor
king" was safe, and it was only Penny himself that ran a
risk of being blown up.
A county proprietor had two estates, one of them resi-