"It’s a kind of hobby of mine," said he; "and even with perishable things it’s not so difficult nowadays, the ice-houses of the big steamers being so convenient. What would you like to drink, sir? I can give ye a choice of Talisker, Glenlivet, Long John, and Lagavulin; but perhaps ye would prefer something lighter in the middle of the day. I hope you don’t object to the smell of the peats; we Scotch folk are rather fond of it; I think our good friend here, Anstruther, would rather have a sniff of the peat than the smell of the best canvas-back duck that was ever carried through a kitchen. I get those peats sent over from Islay: you see, I try to have Scotland—or some fragments of it—brought to me, since I cannot go to it." "But why don’t you go to Scotland, sir?" said Vincent—knowing he was speaking to a man of wealth. "At my time of life," Mr. MacVittie answered, "one falls into certain ways and grooves, and it’s an ill job getting out of them. No, I do not think I shall ever be in Scotland again, until I’m taken there—in a box. I shall have to be like the lady in ’The Gay Goss-hawk’— ’An asking, an asking, my father dear, An asking grant ye me! That if I die in merry England, In Scotland you’ll bury me.’" "Oh, nonsense, John!" one of his partners cried. "Nonsense, man! We’ll have you building a castle up somewhere about Kincardine O’Neil; and every autumn we’ll go over and shoot your grouse and kill your salmon for you. That’s liker it!" Now here were three sharp and shrewd business men met together in the very heart of one of the great commercial cities of the world; and the fourth was a purveyor of news (Vincent did not count: he was so wonderstruck at meeting people who had known George Bethune and Maisrie in former days, and so astonished and fascinated by any chance reference to them that he did not care to propound any opinions of his own: he was well content to listen) and it might naturally have been supposed that their talk would have been of the public topics of the hour—politics home and foreign, the fluctuations of trade, dealings with that portentous surplus that is always getting in the way, and so forth. But it was nothing of the kind. It was all about the dinner of the Burns’ Society of New York, to be given at Sutherland’s in Liberty-street the following evening, in celebration of the birthday of the Scotch poet; and Tom MacVittie—a huge man with a reddish-brown beard and a bald head—in the enthusiasm of the moment was declaring that again and again, on coming across a song, by some one of the minor Scotch poets, that was particularly fine, he wished he had the power to steal it and hand it over to the Ayrshire bard—no doubt on the principle that, ’whosoever hath, to him shall be given.’ Then there was a comparison of this gem and that; favourites were mentioned and extolled; the air was thick with Willie Laidlaw, Allan Cunningham, Nicol, Hogg, Motherwell, Tannahill,