from their brown, wrinkled hands, to hear them, half breathless
from their long, delicious draught, thanking us for the favor, as
"dear, good children"! Not unfrequently these wandering tests
of our benevolence made their appearance in interesting groups
of man, woman, and child, picturesque in their squalidness,
and manifesting a maudlin affection which would have done
honor to the revellers at Poosie-Nansie's, immortal in the
cantata of Burns. (2) I remember some who were evidently the
victims of monomania,--haunted and hunted by some dark
thought,--possessed by a fixed idea. One, a black-eyed, wild-
haired woman, with a whole tragedy of sin, shame, and
suffering written in her countenance, used often to visit us,
warm herself by our winter fire, and supply herself with a stock
of cakes and cold meat; but was never known to answer a
question or to ask one. She never smiled; the cold, stony look
of her eye never changed; a silent, impassive face, frozen rigid
by some great wrong or sin. We used to look with awe upon
the "still woman," and think of the demoniac of Scripture who
had a "dumb spirit."

(1) Whom he met at Calais, as described in his *Sentimental
Journey.*
(2) The *cantata* is *The Jolly Beggars,* from which the
motto heading this sketch was taken. *Poosie-Nansie* was the
keeper of a tavern in Mauchline, which was the favorite resort
of the lame sailors, maimed soldiers, travelling ballad-singers,
and all such loose companions as hang about the skirts of
society. The cantata has for its theme the rivalry of a "pigmy
scraper with his fiddle" and a strolling tinker for a beggar
woman: hence the *maudlin affection.*