"Well, Mr. ——," said Sir Walter, "how do you like your book?"
"They're vera pretty stories, Sir Walter," replied the laird, "but they're unco' short."
Will Any Gentleman Oblige "a Lady"?
In a tramway car at Glasgow, one wet afternoon, a woman of fifty—made up to look as nearly like twenty-five as possible—got on board at a crossing, to find every seat occupied. She stood for a moment, and then selecting a poorly dressed man of about forty years of age, she observed: "Are there no gentlemen on the car?"
"I dinna ken," he replied, as he looked up and down. "If there's nane, I'll hunt up one for you at the end of the line."
There was an embarrasing silence for a moment, and then a light broke in on him all of a sudden, and he rose and said: "But ye can hae this seat: I'm aye wellin' to stan' and gi'e my seat to an auld bodie."
That decided her. She gave him a look which he will not forget till his dying day, and grasping the strap she refused to sit down, even when five seats had become vacant.
Ham and Cheese
On one occasion the late Rev. Walter Dunlop, of the U.P. Church, Dumfries, after a hard day's labor, and while at "denner-tea," as he called it, kept incessantly praising the "haam," and stating that "Mrs. Dunlop at hame was as fond o' haam like that as he was," when the mistress kindly offered to send her the present of a ham.
"It's unco' kin' o' ye, unco' kin'—but I'll no' pit ye to the trouble; I'll just tak' it hame on the horse afore me."