eel, weel,
Mrs. Russell; Providence here or Providence there, an I hadna worked
sair mysell I had been drouned."

Old Mr. Downie, the parish minister of Banchory, was noted, in my
earliest days, for his quiet pithy remarks on men and things, as they
came before him. His reply to his son, of whose social position he had
no very exalted opinion, was of this class. Young Downie had come to
visit his father from the West Indies, and told him that on his return
he was to be married to a lady whose high qualities and position he
spoke of in extravagant terms. He assured his father that she was "quite
young, was very rich, and very beautiful." "Aweel, Jemmy," said the old
man, very quietly and very slily, "I'm thinking there maun be some
_faut_." Of the dry sarcasm we have a good example in the quiet
utterance of a good Scottish phrase by an elder of a Free Kirk lately
formed. The minister was an eloquent man, and had attracted one of the
town-council, who, it was known, hardly ever entered the door of a
church, and now came on motives of curiosity. He was talking very grand
to some of the congregation: "Upon my word, your minister is a very
eloquent man. Indeed, he will quite convert me." One of the elders,
taking the word in a higher sense than the speaker intended, quietly
replied, "Indeed, Bailie, there's _muckle need_."

A kind correspondent sends me an illustration of this quaint
matter-of-fact view of a question as affecting the sentiments or the
feelings. He tells me he knew an old lady who was a stout large woman,
and who with this state of body had many ailments, which she bore
cheerfully and patiently. When asked one day by a friend, "How she was
keeping," she replied, "Ou, just middling; there's _ower muckle o' me_
to be a' weel at ae time." No Englishwoman would have given such an
answer. The same class of character is very strongly marked in a story
which was told by Mr. Thomas Constable, who has a keen appreciation of a
good Scottish story, and tells it inimitably. He used to visit an old
lady who was much attenuated by long illness, and on going up stairs one
tremendously hot afternoon, the daughter was driving away the flies,
which were very troublesome, and was saying, "Thae flies will eat up a'
that remains o' my puir mither." The old lady opened her eyes, and the
last words she spoke were, "What's left o' me's guid eneuch for them."

The spirit of caution and wariness by which the Scottish character is
s