`cold shape,' and the unusual grace and skill with which the hostess
carves. Even at very large dinners one occasionally sees a lady of
high degree severing the joints of chickens and birds most daintily,
while her lord looks on in happy idleness, thinking, perhaps, how
greatly times have changed for the better since the ages of strife
and bloodshed, when Scottish nobles

`Carved at the meal with gloves of steel,
And drank their wine through helmets barred.'

The Scotch butler is not in the least like an English one. No man
could be as respectable as he looks, not even an elder of the kirk,
whom he resembles closely. He hands your plate as if it were a
contribution-box, and in his moments of ease, when he stands behind
the `maister,' I am always expecting him to pronounce a benediction.
The English butler, when he wishes to avoid the appearance of
listening to the conversation, gazes with level eye into vacancy;
the Scotch butler looks distinctly heavenward, as if he were
brooding on the principle of co-ordinate jurisdiction with mutual
subordination. It would be impossible for me to deny the key of the
wine-cellar to a being so steeped in sanctity, but it has been done,
I am told, in certain rare and isolated cases.

As for toilets, the men dress like all other men (alas, and alas,
that we should say it, for we were continually hoping for a kilt!)
though there seems to be no survival of the finical Lord Napier's
spirit. Perhaps you remember that Lord and Lady Napier arrived at
Castlemilk in Lanarkshire with the intention of staying a week, but
announced next morning that a circumstance had occurred which
rendered it indispensable to return without delay to their seat in