days of King David in the performances of sacred
music, together with the psalter, the timbrel, the sackbut, and the
cymbal." The wrath of the polemical Deborah of the Relief-Kirk was
somewhat appeased by this explanation, and she inquired in a more
diffident tone, whether a Mozart was not a metrical paraphrase of the
song of Moses after the overthrow of the Egyptians in the Red Sea; "in
which case, I must own," she observed, "that the sin and guilt of the
thing is less grievous in the sight of HIM before whom all the actions of
men are abominations." Miss Isabella Tod, availing herself of this break
in the conversation, turned round to Miss Nanny Eydent, and begged that
she would read her letter from Mrs. Pringle. We should do injustice,
however, to honest worth and patient industry were we, in thus
introducing Miss Nanny to our readers, not to give them some account of
her lowly and virtuous character.

Miss Nanny was the eldest of three sisters, the daughters of a
shipmaster, who was lost at sea when they were very young; and his all
having perished with him, they were indeed, as their mother said, the
children of Poverty and Sorrow. By the help of a little credit, the
widow contrived, in a small shop, to eke out her days till Nanny was able
to assist her. It was the intention of the poor woman to take up a
girl's school for reading and knitting, and Nanny was destined to
instruct the pupils in that higher branch of accomplishment--the
different stitches of the sampler. But about the time that Nanny was
advancing to the requisite degree of perfection in chain-steek and
pie-holes--indeed had made some progress in the Lord's prayer between two
yew trees--tambouring was introduced at Irvine, and Nanny was sent to
acquire a competent knowledge of that classic art, honoured by the fair
hands of the beautiful Helen and the chaste and domestic Andromache. In
this she instructed her sisters; and such was the fruit of their
application and constant industry, that her mother abandoned the design
of keeping school, and continued to ply her little huxtry in more easy
circumstances. The fluctuations of trade in time taught them that it
would not be wise to trust to the loom, and accordingly Nanny was at some
pains to learn mantua-making; and it was fortunate that she did so--for
the tambouring gradually went out of fashion, and the flowering which
followed suited less the infirm constitution of poor Nanny. The making
of