Their patronage, in my trade, as in most others, is everything. Only get some celebrated country belle to sport a particular and uncommon pattern at a market or at church, and the fate of your napkin-web is fixed. Only get the laird's eldest son to appear in the gallery, at church, in a waistcoat of a particular stripe and combination of colours, and every boor in the parish will purchase the like, at three or four prices. Only get a bride, on her wedding-day, to sport the newest ribbon, and your box is immediately emptied. It is thus that pedlar profit is realized, and a certain degree of notoriety, if not popularity, is obtained. I had got a waistcoat made, for my own use, out of this bit of unsaleable tartan--not, indeed, at the time anticipating any advantage, but the ordinary wear, from the garment. But, as good fortune would have it--and she has much to say in all professions--this very waistcoat was, in a sense, the making of me. I appeared in the town of Moffat in this tartan waistcoat, and had the good fortune, as I stood opposite to the inn-door where the company were to dine, adjusting my pack, and preparing to expose my goods to public view, to be observed from the window by Macpherson himself. He immediately announced the fact of the nature of the tartan which I wore to the gentlemen around him. They immediately began to wonder if the pedlar had any more of the same pattern in his pack; and, from one thing to another, it was agreed, at last, to address me on the subject. Down they came--for they had yet half-an-hour to wait for dinner; and, having made the necessary inquiries, were answered, somewhat shyly, by me, that I "didna ken but I micht hae a wee bit o' the same web." (In fact, I had upwards of two hundred yards deposited snugly in a friend's house, as I passed to England, besides the remnant carried along with me!) So I opened out my supply, and, in a few seconds, I sold the whole of it.