d not think
thoud'st been sae near us, mon. But thou kens I'm an outspoken Yorkshire
tyke. And how go markets in the south?"

"Even in the ordinar," replied Mr. Campbell; "wise folks buy and sell,
and fools are bought and sold."

"But wise men and fools both eat their dinner," answered our jolly
entertainer; "and here a comes--as prime a buttock of beef as e'er hungry
men stuck fork in."

So saying, he eagerly whetted his knife, assumed his seat of empire at
the head of the board, and loaded the plates of his sundry guests with
his good cheer.

This was the first time I had heard the Scottish accent, or, indeed, that
I had familiarly met with an individual of the ancient nation by whom it
was spoken. Yet, from an early period, they had occupied and interested
my imagination. My father, as is well known to you, was of an ancient
family in Northumberland, from whose seat I was, while eating the
aforesaid dinner, not very many miles distant. The quarrel betwixt him
and his relatives was such, that he scarcely ever mentioned the race from
which he sprung, and held as the most contemptible species of vanity, the
weakness which is commonly termed family pride. His ambition was only to
be distinguished as William Osbaldistone, the first, at least one of the
first, merchants on Change; and to have proved him the lineal
representative of William the Conqueror would have far less flattered his
vanity than the hum and bustle which his approach was wont to produce
among the bulls, bears, and brokers of Stock-alley. He wished, no doubt,
that I should remain in such ignorance of my relatives and descent as
might insure a correspondence between my feelings and his own on this
subject. But his designs, as will happen occasionally to the wisest,
were, in some degree at least, counteracted by a being whom his pride
would never have supposed of importance adequate to influence them in any
way. His nurse, an old Northumbrian woman, attached to him from his
infancy, was the only person connected with his native province for whom
he retained any regard; and when fortune dawned upon him, one of the
first uses which he made of her favours, was to give Mabel Rickets a
place of residence within his household. After the death of my mother,
the care of nursing me during my childish illnesses, and of rendering all
those tender attentions which infancy exacts from female affection,
devolved on old Mabel. Interdicted by her master from speaking t