Wherever more than ordinary pains were bestowed upon a cottager's or farmer's garden, Mr. Allison supplied the housewife with seed of a better kind than she might otherwise have been able to procure, and with grafts from his most serviceable fruit trees. No one who behaved well in his employ was ever left in want of employment; he had always some work going on, the cost of which was allowed for as charity, in his accounts: and when he observed in a boy the diligence and the disposition which made it likely that an opportunity of bettering his condition would not be thrown away upon him, he advised, or if need were, enabled the parents to educate him for trade, and at a proper age provided a situation for him in London. If any of their daughters desired to acquire those useful arts which might qualify them for domestic service, they came to assist and learn from Miss Allison when she distilled her waters, made her cowslip, elder, and gooseberry wines, prepared her pickles and preserves, dried her medicinal plants, or constructed the great goose-pye, which in the Christmas week was always dispatched by the York coach to Bishopsgate Street, for the honour of Yorkshire, and the astonishment of the Londoners. They came also when preparations were making for a holiday, for old observances of this kind were maintained as duly there as by the Romans when the Laws of the Twelve Tables were in use, and every man constantly observed his family festivals as thereby enjoined. Pancakes on Shrove Tuesday are still in general usage; indeed I do not know that it was ever deemed malignant and idolatrous to eat them on that day even under the tyranny of the Puritans. But in Mr. Allison's days Mid-lent Sunday was not allowed to pass without a wholesome and savoury bowl of furmity on the social board: and Easter day brought with it not only those coloured eggs which are the friendly offering of that season throughout the whole north of Europe, but the tansy pudding also,—originally perhaps introduced, (and possibly by some compulsory converts from Judaism,) as a representative of the bitter herbs with which the Paschal Lamb was to be eaten.