sixpence:--'I can give you change for a note laird,' replied Andrew.

"Like most who have arisen to the head of their profession, the modern
degradation which mendicity has undergone was often the subject of
Andrew's lamentations. As a trade, he said, it was forty pounds a year
worse since he had first practised it. On another occasion he observed,
begging was in modern times scarcely the profession of a gentleman, and
that if he had twenty sons, he would not easily be induced to breed one
of them up in his own line. When or where this _laudator temporis
acti_ closed his wanderings, the author never heard with certainty;
but most probably, as Burns says--

"----he died a cadger-powny's death
At some dike side."


"The author may add another picture of the same kind as Edie Ochiltree
and Andrew Gemmells; considering these illustrations as a sort of
gallery, open to the reception of any thing which may elucidate former
manners, or amuse the reader.

"The author's contemporaries at the university of Edinburgh will
probably remember the thin wasted form of a venerable old Bedesman, who
stood by the Potter-row Port, now demolished; and, without speaking a
syllable, gently inclined his head, and offered his hat, but with the
least possible Degree of urgency, towards each individual who passed.
This man gained, by silence and the extenuated and wasted appearance of
a palmer from a remote country, the same tribute which was yielded to
Andrew Gemmells's sarcastic humour and stately deportment. He was
understood to be able to maintain a son a student in the theological