out constraint; and under a burden which would
press my lady's waiting-maid to the carpet, she moves free, firm,
elastic. Her tongue is not labour-logged, her feet are not
creel-retarded; but, altogether unconscious of the presence of hundreds,
she holds on her way and her discourse as if she were a caravan in the
desert. She is to be found in every street and alley of Auld Reekie,
till her work is accomplished. Her voice of call is exceedingly musical,
and sounds sweetly in the ears of the infirm and bedrid. All night long
she holds her stand close by the theatre, with her broad knife and her
opened oyster. In vain does the young spark endeavour to engage her in
licentious talk. He soon discovers that, wherever her feelings or
affections tend, they do not point in his favour. Thus, loaded with
pence, and primed with gin, she returns by midnight to her home--there
to share a supper-pint with her man and her neighbours, and to prepare,
by deep repose, for the duties of a new day. Far happier and far more
useful she, in her day and generation, than that thing of fashion which
men call a beau or a belle--in whose labours no one rejoices, and in
whose bosom no sentiment but self finds a place. In Buckhaven, again,
the Salique law prevails. There men are men, and women mere appendages.
The sea department is here all in all. The women, indeed, crawl a little
way, and through a few deserted fields, into the surrounding country;
but the man drives the cart, and the cart carries the fish; and the fish
are found in all the larger inland towns eastward. Cellardykes is a
mixture of the two--a kind of William and Mary government, where, side
by side, at the same cart, and not unfrequently in the same boat, are to
be found man and woman, lad and lass. Oh, it is a pretty sight to see
the Cellardyke fishers leaving the coast for the herring-fishing in the
north! I witnessed it some years ago, as I passed to Edinburgh; and this
year I witnessed it again.

Meeting and conversing with my old friend the minister of the parish of
Kilrenny, we laid us down on the sunny slope of the brae facing the east
and the Isle of May, whilst he gave me the following narrative:--

Thomas Laing and Sarah Black were born and brought up under the same
roof--namely, that double-storied tenement which stands somewhat by
itself, overlooking the harbour. They entered by the same outer door,
but occupied each a separate story. Thomas Laing was always a stout,
h