A labouring Highlandman, who lived in the upper parts of Perthshire, whose wife was taken in labour, wished him to retire out of the house. Janet says to him--"Oh! you be gang awa', Duncan, gang awa'!" The man, however, kept loitering about the door, seemingly impressed with something of great importance. At last he cries to his wife, "You speak a me, Shanet! you speak a me." The wife asks, "What you say, Duncan?" "Gie the cummer (the midwife) a dram, Shanet, gie the cummer a dram!" "What for Duncan?" "Gie the cummer a dram, Shanet, an' tell _him to make her a laddie_." _The Purse and the Penny Siller._ Three young Highlanders, some years ago, set out from their native hills, to seek a livelihood amongst their countrymen in the Lowlands. They had hardly learned any English. One of them could say, "We three Highlandmen;" the second, "For the purse and the penny siller;" and the third had properly learned, "And our just right too;" intending thus to explain the motives o' their journey. They trudged along, when, in a lonely glen, they saw the body of a man who had been recently murdered. The Highlanders stopped to deplore the fate of the unhappy mortal, when a gentleman with his servant came up to the spot. "Who murdered this poor man?" said the gentleman, "We three Highlandmen," answered the eldest of the brothers (thinking the gentleman inquired who they were). "What could induce you to commit so horrid a crime?" continued the gentleman. "The Purse and the Penny Siller," replied the second of the travellers. "You shall be hanged, you miscreants!" "And our just right too," returned the third. The poor men were thus brought to the gallows on their own evidence, and presumption of guilt. _Lump of Old Wood._ An aged man, named Thomas Wood, sitting on a high three-footed stool in the gallery of the old Church of Falkirk, during divine service happened to fall asleep, tumbled on the floor with a great noise. The preacher stopped and demanded the reason of the noise. "Nothing, sir," cries a wag, "but a lump of Old Wood fallen down." _The Great Want._ A female pauper lately made a very strong and forcible appeal to the elders and heritors of a certain parish, for an advance of 4s. 6d. Some one of the grave quorum inquired what made her so urgent on this occasion, when she had lately got a supply of coals, shoes, etc. To this she replied, "Why, deed, sirs, it's just to buy a pair o' corsets to my daughter Tibbie, ilk lass that's ocht respectable has them but hersel', so ye see she canna do wantin them, an' ye maun e'en let me ha't sirs." _The Devil Defined._