Scottish Hospitality.
The Scotch people—even the females—are great smokers, and female tobacco-users are not considered the embodiment of neatness.
“WILL YE TAK’ A BLAST NOO?”
The Countess of A., with a laudable desire to promote tidiness in the various cottages on her estate, used to visit them periodically, and exhort the inmates to cleanliness. One cottage was always found especially untidy; and getting, perhaps, the least out of patience, the countess took up a brush-broom, and having by its dexterous use made the room much improved, she turned to the housewife, who, with pipe between her lips, had been sitting on a stool, with body bent forward, her elbows on her knees, and her chin resting in the palms of her hands, watching the proceeding. The Countess said,—
“There, my good woman, is it not much better?”
“Ay, my leddy,” said the woman, nodding her head, and rising, she stepped towards the countess, drew the pipe from her mouth, and wiping it with her brawny palm, presented it, saying,—
“An’ will ye tak’ a blast noo, my leddy?”
Animals in the Stomach.
Most physicians scout the idea of terrestrial animals or reptiles living in one’s stomach. The wife of Captain Hodgden, of Mount Desert, presented the writer with a singular looking reptile some three inches in length, looking not unlike an earwig, excepting having two horns on its head, which animal she said crawled from her mouth the night previous. She declared for years that there was a live animal in her stomach, and attributed its dislodgment to the use of some bitters (Chelone glabra).