People are still alive who have had personal acquaintance with Miss Stirling Graham,—the lady who died as recently as 1877 at the venerable age of ninety-five years, and who, some fifty or sixty years before that, was famous in Edinburgh society for what were called her _mystifications_. These consisted in her power of assuming an imaginary character (generally that of an old Scottish lady), dressing up in that character, appearing so dressed up unexpectedly in any large company in a drawing-room, or even in the private study of some eminent lawyer or judge, and carrying on a long rigmarole conversation in the assumed character with such bewildering effect that her auditor or auditors were completely deceived, and supposed the garrulous intruder to be some crazy eccentric from a country-house or some escaped madwoman. It was on the 7th of March 1828 that Sir Walter Scott witnessed, in the house of Lord Gillies, after dinner, one of those “mystifications” of Miss Stirling Graham; and he describes it in his Journal thus:—“Miss Stirling Græme, a lady of the Duntroon family, from whom Clavers was descended, looks like thirty years old, and has a face of the Scottish cast, with a good expression in point of good sense and good-humour. Her conversation, so far as I have had the advantage of hearing it, is shrewd and sensible, but noways brilliant. She dined with us, went off as if to the play, and returned in the character of an old Scottish lady. Her dress and behaviour were admirable, and her conversation unique. I was in the secret, of course, and did my best to keep up the ball; but she cut me out of all feather. The prosing account which she gave of her son, the antiquary, who found an auld wig in a slate-quarry, was extremely ludicrous; and she puzzled the Professor of Agriculture with a merciless account of the succession of crops in the parks around her old mansion-house. No person to whom the secret was not entrusted had the least guess of an imposture, except one shrewd young lady present, who observed the hand narrowly, and saw that it was plumper than the age of the lady seemed to warrant.” From a note appended to this entry by Mr. Douglas we learn what Sir Walter said to Miss Stirling Graham on this occasion, by way of complimenting her on her performance after it was over. “Awa’, awa’!” he said; “the Deil’s ower grit wi’ you.” There was, he saw, something supernatural in her when she was in the mood and attitude of her one most congenial function. All the gifts that were latent in the shrewd and sensible-looking, but noways brilliant lady, flashed out upon others, and were revealed even to herself, in the act of her personations.