above a dozen."
Saunders Paul was, as I have said, the innkeeper at Banchory: his friend
and _porter_ companion was drowned in the Dee, and when told that the
body had been found down the stream below Crathes, he coolly remarked,
"I am surprised at that, for I never kenn'd him pass the inn before
without comin' in for a glass."

Some relatives of mine travelling in the Highlands were amused by
observing in a small road-side public-house a party drinking, whose
apparatus for conviviality called forth the dry quaint humour which is
so thoroughly Scottish. Three drovers had met together, and were
celebrating their meeting by a liberal consumption of whisky; the inn
could only furnish one glass without a bottom, and this the party passed
on from one to another. A queer-looking pawky chield, whenever the glass
came to his turn, remarked most gravely, "I think we wadna be the waur
o' some water," taking care, however, never to add any of the simple
element, but quietly drank off his glass.

There was a sort of infatuation in the supposed dignity and manliness
attached to powers of deep potation, and the fatal effects of drinking
were spoken of in a manner both reckless and unfeeling. Thus, I have
been assured that a well-known old laird of the old school expressed
himself with great indignation at the charge brought against hard
drinking that it had actually _killed_ people. "Na, na, I never knew
onybody killed wi' drinking, but I hae kenn'd some that dee'd in the
training." A positive _eclat_ was attached to the accomplished and
well-trained consumer of claret or of whisky toddy, which gave an
importance and even merit to the practice of drinking, and which had a
most injurious effect. I am afraid some of the Pleydells of the old
school would have looked with the most ineffable contempt on the
degeneracy of the present generation in this respect, and that the
temperance movement would be little short of insanity in their eyes; and
this leads me to a remark.--In considering this portion of the subject,
we should bear in mind a distinction. The change we now speak of
involves more than a mere change of a custom or practice in social life.
It is a change in men's sentiments and feelings on a certain great
question of morals. Except we enter into this distinction we cannot
appreciate the extent of the change which has really taken place in
regard to intemperate habits.

I have an anecdote from a descendant of Principal Robert