gait? can ye no draw in your chair and sit down? I'm sure there's
_plenty on the table for three_."

As a specimen of the old-fashioned Laird, now become a Reminiscence, who
adhered pertinaciously to old Scottish usages, and to the old Scottish
dialect, I cannot, I am sure, adduce a better specimen than Mr.
Fergusson of Pitfour, to whose servant I have already referred. He was
always called Pitfour, from the name of his property in Aberdeenshire.
He must have died fifty years ago. He was for many years M.P. for the
county of Aberdeen, and I have reason to believe that he made the
enlightened parliamentary declaration which has been given to others: He
said "he had often heard speeches in the _House_, which had changed his
opinion, but none that had ever changed his vote." I recollect hearing
of his dining in London sixty years ago, at the house of a Scottish
friend, where there was a swell party, and Pitfour was introduced as a
great northern proprietor, and county M.P. A fashionable lady patronised
him graciously, and took great charge of him, and asked him about his
estates. Pitfour was very dry and sparing in his communications, as for
example, "What does your home farm chiefly produce, Mr. Fergusson?"
Answer, "Girss." "I beg your pardon, Mr. Fergusson, what does your home
farm produce?" All she could extract was, "Girss."

Of another laird, whom I heard often spoken of in old times, an anecdote
was told strongly Scottish. Our friend had much difficulty (as many
worthy lairds have had) in meeting the claims of those two woeful
periods of the year called with us in Scotland the "tarmes." He had been
employing for some time as workman a stranger from the south on some
house repairs, of the not uncommon name in England of Christmas. His
servant early one morning called out at the laird's door in great
excitement that "Christmas had run away, and nobody knew where he had
gone." He coolly turned in his bed with the ejaculation, "I only wish he
had taken Whitsunday and Martinmas along with him." I do not know a
better illustration of quiet, shrewd, and acute Scottish humour than the
following little story, which an esteemed correspondent mentions having
heard from his father when a boy, relating to a former Duke of Athole,
who had _no family of his own_, and whom he mentions as having
remembered very well:--He met, one morning, one of his cottars or
gardeners, whose wife he knew to be in the _hopeful way_. Asking him
"ho