Liverpool, Oct. 4, 1895.

A GENERAL PRACTITIONER.

I

A GENERAL PRACTITIONER

Drumtochty was accustomed to break every law of health, except wholesome
food and fresh air, and yet had reduced the Psalmist's farthest limit to
an average life-rate. Our men made no difference in their clothes for
summer or winter, Drumsheugh and one or two of the larger farmers
condescending to a topcoat on Sabbath, as a penalty of their position,
and without regard to temperature. They wore their blacks at a funeral,
refusing to cover them with anything, out of respect to the deceased,
and standing longest in the kirkyard when the north wind was blowing
across a hundred miles of snow. If the rain was pouring at the Junction,
then Drumtochty stood two minutes longer through sheer native dourness
till each man had a cascade from the tail of his coat, and hazarded the
suggestion, halfway to Kildrummie, that it had been "a bit scrowie,"
a "scrowie" being as far short of a "shoor" as a "shoor" fell below
"weet."

[Illustration: SANDY STEWART "NAPPED" STONES]

This sustained defiance of the elements provoked occasional judgments in
the shape of a "hoast" (cough), and the head of the house was then
exhorted by his women folk to "change his feet" if he had happened to
walk through a burn on his way home, and was pestered generally with
sanitary precautions. It is right to add that the gudeman treated such
advice with contempt, regarding it as suitable for the effeminacy of
towns, but not seriously intended for Drumtochty. Sandy Stewart "napped"
stones on the road in his shirt sleeves, wet or fair, summer and winter,
till he was persuaded to retire from active duty at eighty-five, and he
spent ten years more in regretting his hastiness and criticising his
successor. The ordinary course of life, with fine air and contented
minds, was to do a full share of work till seventy, and then to look
after "orra" jobs well into the eighties, and to "slip awa" within sight
of ninety. Persons above ninety were understood to be acquitting
themselves with credit, and assumed airs of authority, brushing aside
the opinions of seventy as immature, and confirming their conclusions
with illustrations drawn from the end of last century.

When Hillocks' brother so far forgot himself as to "slip awa"
at sixty, that worthy man was scandalized, and offered laboured
explanations at the "beerial."

"It's an awfu' business ony wy ye lo