l as he went. "What's to be dune, John?" was the
minister's pathetic inquiry. John shook his head, as much as to say that
he could not tell; but immediately thereafter started up, as if a new
idea had occurred to him. He came back in a few minutes, crying, "Hae!"
The minister, too eager to be scrutinising, took a long, deep pinch, and
then said, "Whaur did you get it?" "I soupit[41] the poupit," was John's
expressive reply. The minister's accumulated superfluous Sabbath snuff
now came into good use.

It does not appear that at this time a similar excess in _eating_
accompanied this prevalent tendency to excess in drinking. Scottish
tables were at that period plain and abundant, but epicurism or gluttony
do not seem to have been handmaids to drunkenness. A humorous anecdote,
however, of a full-eating laird, may well accompany those which
appertain to the _drinking_ lairds.--A lady in the north having watched
the proceedings of a guest, who ate long and largely, she ordered the
servant to take away, as he had at last laid down his knife and fork. To
her surprise, however, he resumed his work, and she apologised to him,
saying, "I thought, Mr. ----, you had done."

"Oh, so I had, mem; but I just fan' a doo in the _redd_ o' my plate." He
had discovered a pigeon lurking amongst the bones and refuse of his
plate, and could not resist finishing it.

FOOTNOTES:

[19] Distinguished examples of these are to be found in the Old
Greyfriars' Church, Edinburgh, and in the Cathedral of Glasgow; to say
nothing of the beautiful specimens in St. John's Episcopal Church,
Edinburgh.

[20] "This was a square enclosure in the Greyfriars' Churchyard, guarded
on one side by a veteran angel without a nose, and having only one wing,
who had the merit of having maintained his post for a century, while his
comrade cherub, who had stood sentinel on the corresponding pedestal,
lay a broken trunk, among the hemlock, burdock, and nettles, which grew
in gigantic luxuriance around the walls of the mausoleum."

[21] A Shetland pony.

[22] The Lord's Supper.

[23] Bullock.

[24] Perhaps.

[25] Carefully selected.

[26] I recollect an old Scottish gentleman, who shared this horror,
asking very gravely, "Were not swine forbidden under the law, and cursed
under the gospel?"

[27] Lie in a grovelling attitude. See Jamieson.

[28] So pronounced in Aberdeen.

[29] Implying that there was a James Third of England, Eighth of
Scotland.

[30]