But what, of all things, attracted my attention on that memorable day, was the show of cows, sheep and horses, mooing, baaing, and neighering; and the race--that was best! Od, what a sight!--we were jammed in the crowd of auld wives, with their toys and shining ribbons; and carter lads, with their blue bonnets; and young wenches, carrying home their fairings in napkins, as muckle as would hold their teeth going for a month;--there scarcely could he muckle for love, when there was so much for the stomach;--and men with wooden legs, and brass virls at the end of them, playing on the fiddle,--and a bear that roared, and danced on its hind feet, with a muzzled mouth,--and Punch and Polly,--and puppie-shows and mair than I can tell,--when up came the horses to the starting-post. I shall never forget the bonny dresses of the riders. One had a napkin tied round his head, another had on a black velvet hunting-cap and his coat stripped O! but he was a brave lad and sorrow was the folks for him, when he fell off in taking ower sharp a turn, by which auld Pullen, the bell-ringer wha was holding the post was made to coup the creels. And the last was all life, as gleg as an eel. Up and down he went and up and down gaed the beast on its hind-legs and its fore-legs, funking like mad; yet tho’ he was not aboon thirteen, or fourteen at most, he did not cry out for help more than five or six times, but grippit at the mane with one hand and at the back of the saddle with the other, til, daft Robie, the hostler at the stables claught hold of the beast by the head, and off they set. The young birkie had neither hat nor shoon but he did not spare the stick; round and round they flew like daft. Ye would have thought their een would have loupen out, and loudly all the crowd were hurraing, when young hatless came up foremost, standing in the stirrups, the long stick between his teeth, and his white hair fleeing behind him in the wind like streamers on a frosty night. CALF-LOVE. Just after I was put to my ’prenticeship, having made free choice of the tailoring trade, I had a terrible stound of calf-love. Never shall I forget it. I was growing up, long and lank as a willow-wand, brawns to my legs there were none, as my trowsers of other years too visibly effected to show. The long yellow hair hung down, like a flax-wig, the length of my lantern jaws, which looked, notwithstanding my yapness and stiff appetite, as if eating and they had broken up acquaintanceship. My blue jacket seemed in the sleeves to have picket a quarrel with the wrists, and had retreated to a tait below the elbows. The haunch-buttons, on the contrary appeared to have taken a strong liking to the shoulders, a little below which they showed their tarnished brightness. At the middle of the back the tails terminated, leaving the well-worn rear of my corduroys, like a full moon seen through a dark haze. Oh! but I must have been a bonny lad.