They had worked at this--what was called '_a service_'-- during three previous hours, one party succeeding another, and many taking advantage of every service, which consisted of a prayer by way of grace, a glass of _white_ wine, a glass of _red_ wine, a glass of _rum_, and a prayer by way of thanksgiving.

After the long invocation, bread and wine passed round.
Silence prevailed.

Most partook of both _rounds_ of wine, but when the rum came, many nodded refusal, and by and by the nodding seemed to be universal, and the trays passed on so much the more quickly.

A sumphish weather-beaten man, with a large flat blue bonnet on his knee, who had nodded unwittingly, and was about to lose the last chance of a glass of rum, raised his head, saying, amid the deep silence, 'Od, I daursay I _wull_ tak anither glass,' and in a sort of vengeful, yet apologetic tone, added, 'The auld jaud yince cheated me wi' a cauve' (calf)." At a farmer's funeral in the country, an undertaker was in charge of the ceremonial, and directing how it was to proceed, when he noticed a little man giving orders, and, as he thought, rather encroaching upon the duties and privileges of his own office.

He asked him, "And wha are ye, mi' man, that tak sae muckle on ye ?" "Oh, dinna ye ken ?" said the man, under a strong sense of his own importance, "I'm the corp's brither[168] ?" Curious scenes took place at funerals where there was, in times gone by, an unfortunate tendency to join with such solemnities more attention to festal entertainment than was becoming.