Fraser towards her husband was very like that of the Scotswoman in the old song:-- I wish that you were dead, goodman, An’ a green sod on your head, goodman, That I might wear my widowhood Upon a ranting Highlandman. There’s sax eggs in the pan, goodman, There’s sax eggs in the pan, goodman. There’s ane to you, and twa to me, An’ three to our John Highlandman! Another Scottish widow reminds us of the widow in Voltaire’s ‘Zadig’ for delicate fidelity towards a deceased husband. The relict in question was one day in spring seen by the clerk of her parish crossing the churchyard with a watering-pot and a bundle. ‘Ah, Mistress Mactavish,’ said the clerk, ‘what’s yer bus’ness, wi’ sic like gear as that y’are carryin’?’ ‘Ah, weel, Mr. Maclachlan,’ replied the widow, ‘I’m just goin’ to my gudeman’s grave. I’ve got some hay-seeds in my bundle, the which I’m goin’ to sow upon it; and the water in the can is just to gi’e ’em a spring like!’ ‘The seeds winna want the watering,’ rejoined the clerk, ‘they’ll spring finely o’ themselves.’ ‘That may well be,’ rejoined the widow; ‘but ye dinna ken that my gudeman, as he lay a-deeing, just got me to make promise that I’d never marry agin till the grass had grown aboon his grave. And, as I’ve had a good offer made me but yestreen, ye see, I dinna like to break my promise, or to be kept a lone widow, as ye see me!’ The minister’s aide-de-camp looked on the widow, indeed, with a mirthful expression. ‘Water him weel, widow,’ said the clerk; ‘Mactavish aye was drouthy!’ The above took place within the Georgian era, when both old and young ladies in Scotland broadly called things by their names. We are not sure that it was not the same everywhere. As a Scottish sample, we take the last duchess of the house of Douglas, who was a ‘jolly’ lady in manner and matter; broad in figure and in speech, and not to be offended by word or innuendo. When the duchess was in Paris with several Scottish gentlemen, in the reign of George III., 1762, the language and ideas of the whole party were of a sort, it is said, to make the hair of the fastest of our day to stand on end. One of the gentlemen suggested that when the duchess went to court she should claim the right to occupy a _tabouret_, or low seat, in the royal presence, by virtue of her late husband’s ancestors having held a French dukedom (Touraine). Robert Chambers, who had the story from Sir James Stuart of Coltness, one of the party, says that the old lady made all sorts of excuses in her homely way; but when Boysock started the theory that the real objection lay in her grace’s fears as to the disproportioned size of the _tabouret_ for the correlative part of her figure, he was declared, amidst shouts of laughter, to have divined the true difficulty--her grace enjoying the joke as much as any of them. The story may remind some readers of the assembly at Mrs. Montague’s, when that bluntest of ladies asked Dr.