which his dress announced, was well supported by his clear eye, ruddy
cheek, and grey hair. He used the Scottish idiom in his first address,
but in such a manner that it could hardly be distinguished whether he
was passing upon his friend a sort of jocose mockery, or whether it
was his own native dialect, for his ordinary discourse had little
provincialism.

In answer to the queries of his respectable friend, Ramsay groaned
heavily, answering by echoing back the question, "What ails me, Master
George? Why, every thing ails me! I profess to you that a man may as
well live in Fairyland as in the Ward of Farringdon-Without. My
apprentices are turned into mere goblins--they appear and disappear
like spunkies, and have no more regularity in them than a watch
without a scapement. If there is a ball to be tossed up, or a bullock
to be driven mad, or a quean to be ducked for scolding, or a head to
be broken, Jenkin is sure to be at the one end or the other of it, and
then away skips Francis Tunstall for company. I think the prize-
fighters, bear-leaders, and mountebanks, are in a league against me,
my dear friend, and that they pass my house ten times for any other in
the city. Here's an Italian fellow come over, too, that they call
Punchinello; and, altogether----"

"Well," interrupted Master George, "but what is all this to the
present case?"

"Why," replied Ramsay, "here has been a cry of thieves or murder, (I
hope that will prove the least of it amongst these English pock-
pudding swine!) and I have been interrupted in the deepest calculation
ever mortal man plunged into, Master George."