"There is many a slip 'tween the cup and the lip," said Peter.
"And, indeed, Mr Farrel, ye never spoke a truer word," said I.

"We are here to-day--yonder to-morrow; this moment we are shining like the mid- day sun, and on the next, pugh! we go out like the snuff of a candle.
'Man's life,' as Job observes, 'is like a weaver's shuttle.'" "But, Maister Wauch," quo' Peter, who was a hearer of the Parish Church, "you dissenting bodies aye take the black side of things; never considering that the doubtful shadows of affairs sometimes brighten up into the cloudless daylight.

For instance, now, there was an old fellow- apprentice of my father's, who, like myself, was a baker, his name was Charlie Cheeper; and, both his father and mother dying when he was yet hardly in trowsers, he would have been left without a hame in the world, had not an old widow woman, who had long lived next door to them, and whose only breadwinner was her spinning-wheel, taken the wee wretchie in to share her morsel.

For several years, as might naturally have been expected, the callant was a perfect deadweight on the concern, and perhaps, in her hours of greater distress, the widow regretted the heedlessness of her Christian charity; but Charlie had a winning way with him, and she could not find it in her heart to turn him to the door.

By the time he was seven--and a ragged coute he was as ever stepped without shoes--he could fend for himself, by running messages--holding horses at shop doors--winning bools and selling them--and so on; so that, when he had collected half-a-crown in a penny pig, the widow sent him to the school, where he got on like a hatter, and in a little while, could both read and write.