r! the fume of it went round about their hearts like myrrh
and frankincense. The landlord took the head of the table, the bailies
the right and left of him; the deacons and councillors were ranged along
the sides, like files of soldiers; and the chaplain at the foot said
grace. It is entirely out of the power of man to set down on paper all
that they got to eat and drink; and such was the effect of French
cookery, that they did not know fish from flesh. Howsoever, for all
that, they laid their lugs in every thing that lay before them, and what
they could not eat with forks they supped with spoons; so it was all to
one purpose.

When the dishes were removing, each had a large blue glass bowl full of
water, and a clean calendered damask towel, put down by a smart flunkie
before him; and many of them that had not helped themselves well to the
wine, while they were eating their steaks and French frigassees, were now
vexed to death on that score, imagining that nothing remained for them,
but to dight their nebs and flee up.

Ignorant folk should not judge rashly, and the worthy town-council were
here in error; for their surmises, however feasible, did the landlord
wrong. In a minute they had fresh wine decanters ranged down before
them, filled with liquors of all variety of colours, red, green, and
blue; and the table was covered with dishes full of jargonelles and
pippins, raisins and almonds, shell-walnuts and plumdamases, with nut-
crackers, and every thing else they could think of eating; so that, after
drinking "The King, and long life to him," and "The constitution of the
country at home and abroad," and "Success to trade," and "A good
harvest," and "May ne'er waur be among us," and "Botheration to the
French," and "Corny toes and short shoes to the foes of old Scotland,"
and so on, their tongues began at length not to be so tacked; and the
weight of their own dignity, that had taken flight before his lordship,
came back and rested on their shoulders.

In the course of the evening, his lordship whispered to one of the
flunkies to bring in some things--they could not hear what--as the
company might like them. The wise ones thought within themselves that
the best aye comes hindmost; so in brushed a powdered valet, with three
dishes on his arm of twisted black things, just like sticks of Gibraltar-
rock, but different in the colour.

Bailie Bowie helped himself to a jargonelle, and Deacon Purves to a wheen
raisin