off that debt, but it was too much for him, and he died
in the struggle. His sons kept on the business with the old industry,
and with better fortune. At last their old mother fell sick, and told
her sons she was dying, as in truth she was. The elder son said to her,
'Mother, you'll soon be with my father; no doubt you'll have much to
tell him; but dinna forget this, mother, mind ye, tell him _the house is
freed_. He'll be glad to hear that.'"

A similar feeling is manifest in the following conversation, which, I am
assured, is authentic:--At Hawick the people used to wear wooden clogs,
which make a _clanking_ noise on the pavement. A dying old woman had
some friends by her bedside, who said to her, "Weel, Jenny, ye are gaun
to heeven, an' gin you should see oor folk, you can tell them that we're
a' weel." To which Jenny replied, "Weel, gin I should see them I'se tell
them, but you manna expect that I am to gang clank clanking through
heevan looking for your folk."

But of all stories of this class, I think the following deathbed
conversation between a Scottish husband and wife is about the richest
specimen of a dry Scottish matter-of-fact view of a very serious
question:--An old shoemaker in Glasgow was sitting by the bedside of his
wife, who was dying. She took him by the hand. "Weel, John, we're gawin
to part. I hae been a gude wife to you, John." "Oh, just middling, just
middling, Jenny," said John, not disposed to commit himself. "John,"
says she, "ye maun promise to bury me in the auld kirk-yard at Stra'von,
beside my mither. I couldna rest in peace among unco folk, in the dirt
and smoke o' Glasgow." "Weel, weel, Jenny, my woman," said John
soothingly, "we'll just pit you in the Gorbals _first_, and gin ye dinna
lie quiet, we'll try you sine in Stra'von."

The same unimaginative and matter-of-fact view of things connected with
the other world extended to a very youthful age, as in the case of a
little boy who, when told of heaven, put the question, "An' will faather
be there?" His instructress answered, "of course, she hoped he would be
there;" to which he sturdily at once replied, "Then I'll no gang."

We might apply these remarks in some measure to the Scottish pulpit
ministrations of an older school, in which a minuteness of detail and a
quaintness of expression were quite common, but which could not now be
tolerated. I have two specimens of such antiquated language, supplied by
correspondents, and I am assu