ing much amused with a Scottish reference of this kind in
the heart of London. Many years ago a Scotch party had dined at
Simpson's famous beef-steak house in the Strand. On coming away some of
the party could not find their hats, and my uncle was jocularly asking
the waiter, whom he knew to be a _Deeside_ man, "Whar are our bonnets,
Jeems?" To which he replied, "'Deed, I mind the day when I had neither
hat nor bonnet."

There is an odd and original way of putting a matter sometimes in Scotch
people, which is irresistibly comic, although by the persons nothing
comic is intended; as for example, when in 1786 Edinburgh was
illuminated on account of the recovery of George III. from severe
illness. In a house where great preparation was going on for the
occasion, by getting the candles fixed in tin sconces, an old nurse of
the family, looking on, exclaimed, "Ay, it's a braw time for the
cannel-makers when the king is sick, honest man!"

Scottish farmers of the old school were a shrewd and humorous race,
sometimes not indisposed to look with a little jealousy upon their
younger brethren, who, on their part, perhaps, showed their contempt for
the old-fashioned ways. I take the following example from the columns of
the _Peterhead Sentinel_, just as it appeared--June 14, 1861:--

"AN ANECDOTE FOR DEAN EAMSAY.--The following characteristic and amusing
anecdote was communicated to us the other day by a gentleman who
happened to be a party to the conversation detailed below. This
gentleman was passing along a road not a hundred miles from Peterhead
one day this week. Two different farms skirt the separate sides of the
turnpike, one of which is rented by a farmer who cultivates his land
according to the most advanced system of agriculture, and the other of
which is farmed by a gentleman of the old school. Our informant met the
latter worthy at the side of the turnpike opposite his neighbour's farm,
and seeing a fine crop of wheat upon what appeared to be [and really
was] very thin and poor land, asked, 'When was that wheat sown?' 'O I
dinna ken,' replied the gentleman of the old school, with a sort of
half-indifference, half-contempt. 'But isn't it strange that such a fine
crop should be reared on such bad land?' asked our informant. 'O,
na--nae at a'--deevil thank it; a gravesteen wad gie guid bree[164] gin
ye gied it plenty o' butter!'"

But perhaps the best anecdote illustrative of the keen shrewdness of the
Scottish farmer