I would do gross injustice to my reader, no less than to myself, were I to quit Cornwall without mentioning a most worthy personage, who, though in a humble station, was one of the best and most original characters I ever met with in my progress through life. This was no other than my worthy hostess, of the principal log hotel, Peggy Bruce. If you could conceive Meg Dodds an Irish instead of a Scotch woman, you would have a lively conception of Peggy. She possessed all the virtues of her prototype, all her culinary talents, all her caprice with guests she did not take a fancy for, and all powers, offensive or defensive, by tongue or broom, as the case in hand rendered the one or the other more expedient. Peggy was the daughter of a respectable Irish farmer, and had made a runaway match with a handsome young Scotch sergeant. She had accompanied her husband through the various campaigns of the revolutionary war, and at the peace, his regiment being disbanded, they set up a small public house, which, when I knew her as a widow, she still kept. The sign was a long board, decorated by a very formidable likeness of St. Andrew at the one end, and St. Patrick at the other, being the patron saints of the high contracting parties over whose domicile they presided, and the whole surrounded by a splendid wreath of thistles and shamrocks. Bred in the army, she still retained her old military predeliction, and a scarlet coat was the best recommendation to her good offices. Civilians of whatever rank she deemed an inferior class of the human race, and it would have been a hard task to have convinced her that the Lord Chancellor was equal in dignity or station to a Captain of Dragoons. It was my luck, (good or bad as the reader may be inclined to determine,) to be a prodigious favourite with the old lady; but even favour with the ladies has its drawbacks and inconveniences, and one of these with me was being dragged to the bedside of every man, woman and child who was taken ill in or about the village. At first I remonstrated against my being appointed physician-extraordinary to the whole parish, with which I was in no way connected; but Peggy found an argument which, as it seemed perfectly satisfactory to herself, had to content me. "What the d--l does the king pay you for, if you are not to attend to his subjects when they require your assistance?"