nt how many interlusive applications of the cordial she will make to her
own throat before she renounce her _opportunity_. In the middle of the
street, Gossip Simson is hurrying along, with the necessaries in her lap,
to treat her "cusin," Christy Lowrie, with a bit and a drop; and ever and
anon she says, "a guid e'en" to this one, and "a guid e'en" to that; and,
between the parties, her head is ever thrown back, as if she were counting
the stars; and, every time the act is repeated, the bottle undergoes a
perceptible diminution of its contents, till, by the time she reaches her
"luving cusin's" door, it is empty; and honest John Simson, at her return,
greets her with--"My feth, Jenny, ye've been at mony a hoose in Christ's
Kirk this nicht, if ane may judge by yer bottle." At the same instant,

"Oh, leddy, help yer prisoneer
This last nicht o' the passing year,"

is struck up at the door; the stock and horn sounds lustily in the ears of
her whose bottle is empty; and, obliged to send them away without either
cake or sup, she hears sounding in her confused ears--

"The day will come when ye'll be dead.
An' ye'll neither care for meal nor bread;"

and, in a short time after, "Jamie the wight," an impling, with a tail of
half-a-dozen minor and subordinate angels, begin blowing their smoking
horns in at both door and window, till honest John is fairly smoked out,
crying, as he hastens to the door--"This comes, Jenny, o' yer lavish
kindness to yer cusins, that we hae naethin left in oor bottle, either to
keep oot thae deevils' breath or wash't oot o' oor choking craigs." He is
no sooner at the door than Geordie Jamieson accosts him in the usual style,
and says he has come for his "hogmanay;" but John, knowing the state of the
bottle, begins a loud cough, in the midst of the smoke, and cries, as he
runs away from his house and visitor, (whom he pretends not to see for the
smoke.) "It's a deevil o' a hardship to be smeeked oot o' ane's ain hoose."

"Now," mutters Jenny, as she hears him run away, "I'll no see his face till
mornin; an' he'll come in as blind's a bat." And out she flies to catch
him; but, in her hurry, she overturns Geordie, just as his lips are
manufacturing the ordinary "Guid e'en to ye, Jenny!"

"The same to ye, Geordie," says she; and, with that boon, leaves him on her
flight.

The truth was, that John had the same instinctive antipathy against a house
where there was an empty bottle as