family. The
servant grows up into old age and confirmed habits when the laird is
becoming a man, a husband, father of a family. The domestic cannot
forget the days when his master was a child, riding on his back,
applying to him for help in difficulties about his fishing, his rabbits,
his pony, his going to school. All the family know how attached he is;
nobody likes to speak harshly to him. He is a privileged man. The
faithful old servant of thirty, forty, or fifty years, if with a
tendency to be jealous, cross, and interfering, becomes a great trouble.
Still the relative position was the result of good feelings. If the
familiarity sometimes became a nuisance, it was a wholesome nuisance,
and relic of a simpler time gone by. But the case of the old servant,
whether agreeable or troublesome, was often so fixed and established in
the households of past days, that there was scarce a possibility of
getting away from it. The well-known story of the answer of one of these
domestic tyrants to the irritated master, who was making an effort to
free himself from the thraldom, shows the idea entertained, by _one_ of
the parties at least, of the permanency of the tenure. I am assured by a
friend that the true edition of the story was this:--An old Mr. Erskine
of Dun had one of these retainers, under whose language and unreasonable
assumption he had long groaned. He had almost determined to bear it no
longer, when, walking out with his man, on crossing a field, the master
exclaimed, "There's a hare." Andrew looked at the place, and coolly
replied, "What a big lee, it's a cauff." The master, quite angry now,
plainly told the old domestic that they _must_ part. But the tried
servant of forty years, not dreaming of the possibility of _his_
dismissal, innocently asked, "Ay, sir; whare ye gaun? I'm sure ye're aye
best at hame;" supposing that, if there were to be any disruption, it
must be the master who would change the place. An example of a similar
fixedness of tenure in an old servant was afforded in an anecdote
related of an old coachman long in the service of a noble lady, and who
gave all the trouble and annoyance which he conceived were the
privileges of his position in the family. At last the lady fairly gave
him notice to quit, and told him he must go. The only satisfaction she
got was the quiet answer, "Na, na, my lady; I druve ye to your marriage,
and I shall stay to drive ye to your burial." Indeed, we have heard of a
still