There was once an old saying very common in the mouths of the Edinburgh people--“As dead as Davie Dempster.” It has long since passed away; but whether it was preferable to the one to which it has given place, viz.,--“As dead as a door-nail,” we must leave to those wise people who can measure degrees of nonvitality in objects which are without life. Be all which as it may, the imputed deadness of David Dempster may appear to have some interest to us when we know the story from which the old popular saying took its rise; and the more, that the story cannot be said to want a moral vitality, if it has not even a spice of humour in it. Certain, to begin with, David Dempster was at least once alive, for we can vouch for his having been a very respectable denizen of the old city. We can even impart the nature of his calling, that of a trafficker in the stuff of man’s wearing apparel, which he sold to those who were willing to buy, and even to some who were unwilling to buy; for David’s tongue, if not so long as his ell-wand, was a deuced deal more supple. Nor does our information end here, for we can, we are happy to say, tell the name of his wife, which was Dorothy; nay, we know even the interesting particular, that when David had more Edinburgh ale in his stomach than humility in his head, he got so far into the heroics as to call her Dorothea; but as for the maiden name of this woman, who was the wife of a man so famous as to have been the source and origin of a proverb, we regret to say that it has gone into the limbo of things that are lost. To make amends, we can, however, add that Mrs Dempster was, at the time of our story, as plump and well coloured as Florabel; but as for David, who was ten years older than his wife, he was just as plain as any man needs be without pretension to being disagreeable.