It wad set ye weel to try yer hand at makin' a man o' him noo." Had Alec been within hearing, he would never have let his mother forget this speech.

For had not she, the immaculate, the reprover, fallen herself into the slough of the vernacular?
The fact is, it is easier to speak the truth in a _patois_, for it lies nearer to the simple realities than a more conventional speech.
I do not however allow that the Scotch is a _patois_ in the ordinary sense of the word.

For had not Scotland a living literature, and that a high one, when England could produce none, or next to none--I mean in the fifteenth century?
But old age, and the introduction of a more polished form of utterance, have given to the Scotch all the other advantages of a _patois_, in addition to its own directness and simplicity.
For a moment the dominie was taken aback, and sat reddening over his toddy, which, not daring even to taste it, he went on stirring with his toddy-ladle.

For one of the disadvantages of a broken life is, that what a person may do with a kind of conscience in the one part, he feels compelled to blush for in the other.

The despotism exercised in the school, even though exercised with a certain sense of justice and right, made the autocrat, out of school, cower before the parents of his helpless subjects.