“Oh, man, that’s the new patent machine for sawin’ turnips,” was the reply.
“For sawin’ neeps!” cried the astonished son of the soil. “Hoo dis’t work?”
“Take hold of the handles,” said the chemist, “and I’ll show you.”
No sooner had he taken hold of the handles than the chemist set the thing in motion. In less than a minute the farmer was dancing and howling in the most dreadful manner.
“Throw the handles on the counter, man,” cried the chemist.
This the farmer was, of course, unable to do.
At length he cried, “Woa! woa! man! Dod, it’s perfect murder haudin’ that thing.”
The chemist then stopped the current of electricity; and as soon as he was released the farmer rushed from the shop, shouting, “By the Lord Harry, I’ll stick to the auld-fashioned barrow yet!”
At a sale of an antiquarian gentleman’s effects in Roxburghshire, which Sir Walter Scott happened to attend, there was one little article—a Roman patera—which occasioned a good deal of competition, and was eventually knocked down to the author of Waverley at a high price. Sir Walter was excessively amused during the time of the bidding to observe how much the price being realized was exciting the astonishment of an old woman who had evidently come there to buy culinary utensils on a more economical principle. When the sale of the article was affected—“Lord, bless me,” she exclaimed, “if the parritch pan gangs at that, what will the kail pat gang for?”