He was sitting on a common deal chair, and on my sister proposing to send down for his use an old arm-chair which she recollected was laid up in a garret, his wife exclaimed against such a needless trouble: "Hout, my leddy, what would he be duin' wi' an arm-chair?
he's just deein' fast awa." I have two anecdotes, illustrative of the same state of feeling, from a lady of ancient Scottish family accustomed to visit her poor dependants on the property, and to notice their ways.

She was calling at a decent cottage, and found the occupant busy carefully ironing out some linens.

The lady remarked, "Those are fine linens you have got there, Janet." "Troth, mem," was the reply, "they're just the gudeman's _deed_ claes, and there are nane better i' the parish." On another occasion, when visiting an excellent woman, to condole with her on the death of her nephew, with whom she had lived, and whose loss must have been severely felt by her, she remarked, "What a nice white cap you have got, Margaret." "Indeed, mem, ay, sae it is; for ye see the gude lad's winding sheet was ower lang, and I cut aff as muckle as made twa bonny mutches" (caps).
There certainly was a quaint and familiar manner in which sacred and solemn subjects were referred to by the older Scottish race, who did not mean to be irreverent, but who no doubt appeared so to a more refined but not really a more religious generation.
It seems to me that this plainness of speech arose in part from the _sincerity_ of their belief in all the circumstances of another condition of being.

They spoke of things hereafter as positive certainties, and viewed things invisible through the same medium as they viewed things present.

The following is illustrative of such a state of mind, and I am assured of its perfect authenticity and literal correctness:--"Joe M'Pherson and his wife lived in Inverness.