Dick Bates or Zekiel Hodder may be, I can't learn. I was offered my choice of three apples, yesterday, and the man who held them, instead of asking me which I would have, this, that, or the other, said something like what I am about to attempt:--'Well, 'zquire, which 'ull'ee ha',--thic, thac, or thuc? Some of the old people, positively, banish 'she' and 'I' from their discourse, using 'her' for the former, like the Welsh, and the kingly plural, for the latter; always, nevertheless, substituting the accusative for the nominative case; as, for instance:--your housekeeper, Sir Waldron, speaking of the housemaid, said to me, to-day, 'Us ha' told her, scaures and scaures o' times, to take up hot water to'ee, at eight o'clock; but her never heeds, not her, then, vor-sooth! her thinks zo much o' gallivanting wi' the men-volks!--her's no good, bless'ee! not a ha'p'orth!' That old housekeeper of yours,--by-the-by,--Waldron, is a grievous nuisance to me; she comes and talks to me daily by the hour. I can't endure the woman.” “My servant annoy you, brother Archibald!--I'm sorry you did not mention this before.” “It seems strange to me,” said Reginald, “that Archibald did not give her an admonition, when she first grew troublesome, and so get rid of her.” “Get rid of her!” exclaimed Archibald. “Sir, you may as well talk of tying a tin-kettle to the tail of a comet!--the thing's impossible. Last night, she spent full half an hour imploring me to suffer her to close the shutters and pin up the curtains of the east window of my bed-room, to prevent the rays from my candle shooting across the park-path outside; which rays, as she protests, impede our grandfather's ghost very much, in his nightly rambles: it seems, that he frequently walks down that path; but as a Devonshire ghost cannot cross a ray of light from a candle, the good old gentleman is compelled to go round, or kick his heels in the cold until 1 get into bed. One of your tenants, brother Waldron, told me, with a very grave face, that he has often met our grandfather, in the middle of the night, with old Geoffry his huntsman, and a whole pack of hounds, hunting a stag at full speed; that he has actually opened the gates for the old man and his ghostly pack to pass through, and that, although 'squire, huntsman, dogs, and stag, are without heads, he recognizes, and honours them! Why, the man must be either a natural idiot, or travelling fast toward lunacy; and yet he's accounted a positive Sir Oracle, in these parts. It is said, our ancestor is seen in all forms, by various persons, at different parts of the village: one scoundrel has had the impudence to tell me, that he met him one night in Blackpool-lane, in the form of a woolpack! and that he gave him a cut with his whip, as he rolled at full speed along the road! Now, admitting that ghosts walk or run, how he could know Sir Jonathan, in the shape of a woolpack, is to me, a miracle:--but, so it was--he