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 man, exclaimed the Laird, “if it was na for the honour of the thing, I could find in my heart to come down.”

The Grave-Digger of Sorn, Ayrshire was as selfish and as mean a sinner as ever handled mattock, or carried mortcloth. He was a very quarrelous and discontented old man, with a voice like the whistle of the wind thro’ a key hole. On a bleak Sunday afternoon in the country, an acquaintance from a neighbouring parish accosted him one day, and asked how the world was moving with him, “Oh, very puirly, sir, very puirly indeed,” was the answer, “the yard has done naething ava for us this Summer, if ye like to believe me, I havna buriet a leevin’ soul this sax weeks.”

An old bachelor who lived in a very economical style, both as regards food and clothing, and not altogether so very trig as some bachelors sometimes appear, was frequently attacked by his acquaintances on the propriety of taking a wife; he was very smartly set upon one day, and told how snod a wife woidd keep him, and many other fine things to induce him to take a