Campbell made a
practice of retiring from the noisy society of the club to spend the
remainder of the evenings in conversation with the intelligent host.
After conducting the business of hotel-keeper in Glasgow, during a
period of twenty-one years, Macindoe became insolvent, and was
necessitated to abandon the concern. He returned to Paisley and resumed
the loom, at the same time adding to his finances by keeping a small
change-house, and taking part as an instrumental musician at the local
concerts. He excelled in the use of the violin. Ingenious as a mechanic,
and skilled in his original employment, he invented a machine for
figuring on muslin, for which he received premiums from the City
Corporation of Glasgow and the Board of Trustees.
Macindoe was possessed of a lively temperament, and his conversation
sparkled with wit and anecdote. His person was handsome, and his open
manly countenance was adorned with bushy locks, which in old age,
becoming snowy white, imparted to him a singularly venerable aspect. He
claimed no merit as a poet, and only professed to be the writer of
"incidental rhymes." In 1805, he published, in a thin duodecimo volume,
"Poems and Songs, chiefly in the Scottish Dialect," which he states, in
the preface, he had laid before the public to gratify "the solicitations
of friends." Of the compositions contained in this volume, the ballad
entitled "A Million o' Potatoes," and the two songs which we have
selected for this work, are alone worthy of preservation.
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