She made, however, a gallant effort to remain true to principle, and, holding up deprecating hands, she said, “Na, thank ye, Mrs. Mitchell, I’ve ta’en the pledge. I have made a solemn vow not to pit han’ or lip to gless again.”
But then, seeing Mrs. Mitchell was about to remove the spirits, she hesitatingly said, “I daur say if you wad put a wee drappie in a tea-cup I could maybe tak’ it.”
A young countryman went a considerable distance to pay a visit to his uncle and aunt and cousins, who were reputed a family of strict teetotallers. During his first meal at his kinsman’s table the young man commented on the absence of spirituous liquors.
“We are a’ temperance folk here, ye ken,” interrupted the old man. “No spirituous liquors are allowed to enter this house.”
After dinner the old man went up stairs to take his customary “forty winks,” the girls started off to Sunday School, and the boys lounged away to smoke in the stable. As soon as Aunt Betty found herself alone in the kitchen she put her initial finger to her lips, to enjoin silence on the part of her youthful nephew, and going to a dark nook in the pantry she drew therefrom a little black bottle, and filling a glass held it out to him, and said—
“Here, John, tak’ a taste o’ that. Our gudeman’s sic a strict teetotaller that I daurna let him ken that I keep a wee drap in the hoose—just for medicine. So dinna mention it.”
A few minutes later the old man cried from the stairhead, “Are you there, John?”
The nephew went upstairs, when the head of the house took him to his own bedroom, where he promptly produced a gallon-jar of whisky from an old portmanteau under the bed, and pouring out a hearty dram, said—
“Teetotalin’ doesna prevent me frae keepin’ a wee drap o’ the ‘rale peat reek’ in case o’ illness, or that; so here, lad, put ye that in your cheek; but (confidentially) not a word aboot it to your auntie, or the laddies.”