Page:Tales of my landlord (Volume 2).djvu/35

 source of information. I have, therefore, called in the supplementary aid of those modest itinerants, whom the scrupulous civility of our ancestors denominated travelling-merchants, and whom, of late, accommodating ourselves in this as in more material particulars to the feelings and sentiments of our more wealthy neighbours, we have learned to call packmen, or pedlars. To country weavers travelling in hopes to get rid of their winter web, but more especially to tailors, who, from their sedentary profession, and the necessity, in our country, of exercising it by temporary residence in the families by whom they are employed, may be considered as possessing a complete register of rural traditions, I have been indebted for many illustrations of the narratives of Old Mortality, much in the taste and spirit of the original.

"I had more difficulty in finding materials for correcting the tone of partiality which evidently pervaded these stars of