yet!"
Exquisite astronomical speculation! Stars, like puppies, are born with
tails, and in due time have them docked. Take an example of a story
where there is no display of any one's wit or humour, and yet it is a
good story, and one can't exactly say why:--An English traveller had
gone on a fine Highland road so long, without having seen an indication
of fellow-travellers, that he became astonished at the solitude of the
country; and no doubt before the Highlands were so much frequented as
they are in our time, the roads sometimes bore a very striking aspect of
solitariness. Our traveller, at last coming up to an old man breaking
stones, asked him if there was _any_ traffic on this road--was it at
_all_ frequented? "Ay," he said, coolly, "it's no ill at that; there was
a cadger body yestreen, and there's yoursell the day." No English
version of the story could have half such amusement, or have so quaint a
character. An answer even still more characteristic is recorded to have
been given by a countryman to a traveller. Being doubtful of his way, he
inquired if he were on the right road to Dunkeld. With some of his
national inquisitiveness about strangers, the countryman asked his
inquirer where he came from. Offended at the liberty, as he considered
it, he sharply reminded the man that where he came from was nothing to
him; but all the answer he got was the quiet rejoinder, "Indeed, it's
just as little to me whar ye're gaen." A friend has told me of an answer
highly characteristic of this dry and unconcerned quality which he heard
given to a fellow-traveller. A gentleman sitting opposite to him in the
stage-coach at Berwick complained bitterly that the cushion on which he
sat was quite wet. On looking up to the roof he saw a hole through which
the rain descended copiously, and at once accounted for the mischief. He
called for the coachman, and in great wrath reproached him with the evil
under which he suffered, and pointed to the hole which was the cause of
it. All the satisfaction, however, that he got was the quiet unmoved
reply, "Ay, mony a ane has complained o' _that_ hole." Another anecdote
I heard from a gentleman who vouched for the truth, which is just a case
where the narrative has its humour not from the wit which is displayed
but from that dry matter-of-fact view of things peculiar to some of our
countrymen. The friend of my informant was walking in a street of Perth,
when, to his horror, he saw a workman fal