“Oh, he’s a sicker ane!” is a phrase used in Scotland in reference to that class of people who make excessively sure about every thing, and are in no manner of means to be imposed upon. I style such persons Secure Ones, in order to be intelligible to southern as well as northern readers. Every body must know a certain class of secure ones by the timid cautiousness and exactness of their behaviour; by the trim, unostentatious propriety of their external aspect. There is a lambs’-woollery comfort and a broad-cloth completeness about this sort of secure one, that nobody can mistake; he even seems to have made the number of buttons in his vest, and the height to which that garment is buttoned up, a matter of accurate calculation. He could not go abroad under less than a certain press of flannel and great-coat for the world; and you might almost as soon expect to meet him without his left arm as minus the silk umbrella under it. (He carries the latter part of himself, or fifth limb, at an angle of about sixty degrees to the horizon, the handle down behind, and the point forked up in front.) When he observes any part of the pavement railed off, in order to save the passengers all danger from an occasional pelleting of stones and bits of plaster which the slaters or chimney-doctors are producing from above, he deploys into the street a good way before coming up to the actual rail or rope, and, in passing, takes care to sweep several good yards beyond the utmost range of shot. “Don’t like these things coming peppering down that way; might almost dislocate one’s shoulder if they were to fall upon it; perhaps we had better go over to the other side of the street altogether. No need, you know, for running into unnecessary danger.” When a secure one ascends a stair, he goes step after step monotonously on, performing every move of his feet with a sound, conscientious deliberation, and seems determined upon doing full justice to every landing-place. He holds firmly, however unnecessarily, by the baluster, since the baluster is there, and he has an obvious satisfaction in the slight pant which he thinks himself entitled to get up on the occasion. The secure one always shuts a door carefully behind him. He takes off his hat softly, with a regard at once to the smooth economy of his hair, and the pile of his chapeau. He has a maxim that the hat should be first raised and loosened from behind, where it slides up along the glossy hair, not from the front, where it encounters a comparative obstruction from the fleshy brow. He lays down his gloves neatly on the top of each other, and hangs up his hat with an air of carefulness truly exemplary. The secure one is a bit of an epicure. When out in the forenoon, he would not for any consideration take lunch or wine. “Madam, would you have me spoil my appetite for dinner?” This appetite he nurses and cherishes in the course of his saunterings between two and five, as carefully as a miser doting over his heap.