exander Bethune, the self-educated
"Fifeshire labourer." This excellent and ingenious man became
subsequently well known by his volume of "Tales and Sketches of the
Scottish Peasantry," published by Mr. Adam Black, and designated at the
time a literary phenomenon. It was truly said of him by the Spectator:
"Alexander Bethune, if he had written anonymously, might have passed for
a regular litterateur." Along with his brother John "the Fifeshire
forester," he published, in 1889, "Practical Economy"--a work which
deserves to be reprinted and spread among the people, as containing the
true secret of domestic happiness, so well exemplified in the contented
and virtuous lives of its humble authors.--ED.

[6] Repast, so called, to which, in some parts of the country,
the friends of the deceased are invited after the funeral.

[7] The materials of which a mud-wall is constructed in many
parts of Scotland.

THE RIVAL NIGHTCAPS.

One little sentence gave rise to all the disputes of the old
philosophers, from Parmenides down to Aristotle, and that was composed
of three words, _ex nihilo nihil_--nothing can come out of nothing--upon
which were raised the doctrines of the atomists, incorporealists,
epicureans, theists, and atheists, and all the other races of dreamers
that have disturbed the common sense, lethargy, or comfort of the world
for thousands of years; so that nothing could have better proved the
absolute nothingness of their favourite maxim, that nothing could come
from nothing, than the effects of that very dogma itself, for nothing
ever made such a stir in the moral world, since it deserved to be called
something. But a more extraordinary circumstance is, that, though we
every day see the most gigantic consequences result from what may be
termed, paradoxically, _less than nothing_, there are certain
metaphysical wiseacres who still stick to the old maxim, in spite of
their own senses, even that of feeling, and declare it to be true
gospel. Let them read the tale of real every-day life we are now to lay
before them, and then say, if they dare, that it is impossible that
anything can come out of inanity. But, to proceed:--

In the neighbourhood of the suburban village of Bridgeton, near
Glasgow, there lived, a good many years ago, a worthy man, and an
excellent weaver, of the name of Thomas Callender, and his wife, a
bustling, active woman, but, if anything, a little of what is called the
randy. We have said