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and the murdering loon had stolen it and put in a bottle of poison instead of it. Lep- er took to his heels, but was pursued and carried before a justice of the peace, where he told all he had done, which made the justice laugh heartily at the joke; and the tailor’s wife was well purged from her feign- ed sickness, laziness, and cursed ill nature; for always when she began to curl her nose for the future, the tailor had no more to say, but Maggy mind the bottle. Leper was working with a master-tailor in Glasgow, who hungered his men; and one morning, just when breakfast was set on the table, in comes a gentleman to try on a suit of clothes; the master being obliged to rise desired the lads to say the grace themselves. Every one refused it, and put it to his neighbour, till Leper un- dertook it, and said with an audible voice, that the stranger gentleman might over- hear him as follows:—--‘Och, hoch! we are a parcel of poor beastly bodies, and we are as beastly minded; if we do not work we                    get nothing to eat; yet we are always eat- ing and always fretting; singing and half starving is like to be our fortune; scartings and scrapings are the most of our mouth- fuls. We would fain thank thee for our benefactors are not worthy the acknow- ledging;—--hey, Amen.’ The gentleman