A certain titled lady, well known around her country town for her long-continued and extensive charities, which are not withheld from those who least deserve them, had a few years since, by the unexpected death of her brother and of his only son, become possessor of a fine estate.

The news soon spread in the neighbourhood, and a group of old women were overheard in the streets of Elgin discussing the fact.

One of them said, "Ay, she may prosper, for she has baith the prayers of the good and of the bad." The second anecdote is a delightful illustration of Mrs.Hamilton's _Cottagers of Glenburnie_, and of the old-fashioned Scottish pride in the _midden_.

About twenty years ago, under the apprehension of cholera, committees of the most influential inhabitants of the county of Moray were formed to enforce a more complete cleansing of its towns and villages, and to induce the cottagers to remove their dunghills or dung-pits from too close a proximity to their doors or windows.

One determined woman, on the outskirts of the town of Forres, no doubt with her future potato crop in view, met the M.P.who headed one of these committees, thus, "Noo, Major, ye may tak our lives, but ye'll no tak our middens." The truth is, many of the peculiarities which marked Scottish society departed with the disuse of the Scottish dialect in the upper ranks.