"Then I canna engage wi' ye, mem; for 'deed I wadna gie the crack i' the kirk-yard for a' the sermon." There is another story which shows that a greater importance might be attached to the crack i' the kirk-yard than was done even by the servant lass mentioned above.

A rather rough subject, residing in Galloway, used to attend church regularly, as it appeared, for the _sake_ of the crack; for on being taken to task for his absenting himself, he remarked, "There's nae need to gang to the kirk noo, for everybody gets a newspaper." The changes that many of us have lived to witness in this kind of intercourse between families and old servants is a part of a still greater change--the change in that modification of the feudal system, the attachment of clans.

This, also, from transfers of property and extinction of old families in the Highlands, as well as from more general causes, is passing away; and it includes also changes in the intercourse between landed proprietors and cottagers, and abolition of harvest-homes, and such meetings.

People are now more independent of each other, and service has become a pecuniary and not a sentimental question.

The extreme contrast of that old-fashioned Scottish intercourse of families with their servants and dependants, of which I have given some amusing examples, is found in the modern manufactory system.