At last our eccentric friend lost patience, and looking at the servant, addressed him thus, "What the deil for are ye dance, dancing, about the room that gait?
can ye no draw in your chair and sit down?
I'm sure there's _plenty on the table for three_." As a specimen of the old-fashioned Laird, now become a Reminiscence, who adhered pertinaciously to old Scottish usages, and to the old Scottish dialect, I cannot, I am sure, adduce a better specimen than Mr.
Fergusson of Pitfour, to whose servant I have already referred.

He was always called Pitfour, from the name of his property in Aberdeenshire.
He must have died fifty years ago.

He was for many years M.P.for the county of Aberdeen, and I have reason to believe that he made the enlightened parliamentary declaration which has been given to others: He said "he had often heard speeches in the _House_, which had changed his opinion, but none that had ever changed his vote." I recollect hearing of his dining in London sixty years ago, at the house of a Scottish friend, where there was a swell party, and Pitfour was introduced as a great northern proprietor, and county M.P.A fashionable lady patronised him graciously, and took great charge of him, and asked him about his estates.

Pitfour was very dry and sparing in his communications, as for example, "What does your home farm chiefly produce, Mr.Fergusson ?" Answer, "Girss." "I beg your pardon, Mr.Fergusson, what does your home farm produce ?" All she could extract was, "Girss." Of another laird, whom I heard often spoken of in old times, an anecdote was told strongly Scottish.

Our friend had much difficulty (as many worthy lairds have had) in meeting the claims of those two woeful periods of the year called with us in Scotland the "tarmes." He had been employing for some time as workman a stranger from the south on some house repairs, of the not uncommon name in England of Christmas.