I recollect being much amused with a Scottish reference of this kind in the heart of London. Many years ago a Scotch party had dined at Simpson's famous beef-steak house in the Strand. On coming away some of the party could not find their hats, and my uncle was jocularly asking the waiter, whom he knew to be a _Deeside_ man, "Whar are our bonnets, Jeems?" To which he replied, "'Deed, I mind the day when I had neither hat nor bonnet." There is an odd and original way of putting a matter sometimes in Scotch people, which is irresistibly comic, although by the persons nothing comic is intended; as for example, when in 1786 Edinburgh was illuminated on account of the recovery of George III. from severe illness. In a house where great preparation was going on for the occasion, by getting the candles fixed in tin sconces, an old nurse of the family, looking on, exclaimed, "Ay, it's a braw time for the cannel-makers when the king is sick, honest man!" Scottish farmers of the old school were a shrewd and humorous race, sometimes not indisposed to look with a little jealousy upon their younger brethren, who, on their part, perhaps, showed their contempt for the old-fashioned ways. I take the following example from the columns of the _Peterhead Sentinel_, just as it appeared--June 14, 1861:-- "AN ANECDOTE FOR DEAN EAMSAY.--The following characteristic and amusing anecdote was communicated to us the other day by a gentleman who happened to be a party to the conversation detailed below. This gentleman was passing along a road not a hundred miles from Peterhead one day this week. Two different farms skirt the separate sides of the turnpike, one of which is rented by a farmer who cultivates his land according to the most advanced system of agriculture, and the other of which is farmed by a gentleman of the old school. Our informant met the latter worthy at the side of the turnpike opposite his neighbour's farm, and seeing a fine crop of wheat upon what appeared to be [and really was] very thin and poor land, asked, 'When was that wheat sown?' 'O I dinna ken,' replied the gentleman of the old school, with a sort of half-indifference, half-contempt. 'But isn't it strange that such a fine crop should be reared on such bad land?' asked our informant. 'O, na--nae at a'--deevil thank it; a gravesteen wad gie guid bree[164] gin ye gied it plenty o' butter!'"