il; I serve ae single lady."

A baby was out with the nurse, who walked it up and down the garden.
"Is't a laddie or a lassie?" said the gardener. "A laddie," said the
maid. "Weel," says he, "I'm glad o' that, for there's ower mony women in
the world." "Hech, man," said Jess, "div ye no ken there's aye maist
sawn o' the best crap?"

The answers of servants used curiously to illustrate habits and manners
of the time,--as the economical modes of her mistress's life were well
touched by the lass who thus described her ways and domestic habits with
her household: "She's vicious upo' the wark; but eh, she's vary
mysterious o' the victualling."

A country habit of making the gathering of the congregation in the
churchyard previous to and after divine service an occasion for gossip
and business, which I remember well, is thoroughly described in the
following:--A lady, on hiring a servant girl in the country, told her,
as a great indulgence, that she should have the liberty of attending the
church every Sunday, but that she would be expected to return home
always immediately on the conclusion of service. The lady, however,
rather unexpectedly found a positive objection raised against this
apparently reasonable arrangement. "Then I canna engage wi' ye, mem; for
'deed I wadna gie the crack i' the kirk-yard for a' the sermon."

There is another story which shows that a greater importance might be
attached to the crack i' the kirk-yard than was done even by the servant
lass mentioned above. A rather rough subject, residing in Galloway, used
to attend church regularly, as it appeared, for the _sake_ of the crack;
for on being taken to task for his absenting himself, he remarked,
"There's nae need to gang to the kirk noo, for everybody gets a
newspaper."

The changes that many of us have lived to witness in this kind of
intercourse between families and old servants is a part of a still
greater change--the change in that modification of the feudal system,
the attachment of clans. This, also, from transfers of property and
extinction of old families in the Highlands, as well as from more
general causes, is passing away; and it includes also changes in the
intercourse between landed proprietors and cottagers, and abolition of
harvest-homes, and such meetings. People are now more independent of
each other, and service has become a pecuniary and not a sentimental
question. The extreme contrast of that old-fashioned Scottish
intercou