cally continued the process of dissolving tobacco into vapour. "There is no necessity," he at length observed, "for saying anything more about the matter. THE LEG IS MADE OF CORK!" WARMING A TOMB. About ten years prior to the commencement of the current century, the convivial usages of Scotland had assumed a peculiarly aggravated and reckless character. Intoxication, so far at least as the upper classes were concerned, instead of being deemed a vice or even a blemish, was looked upon as a mark of aristocratic virility and good fellowship. Almost any gentleman would as lief have been called a liar or a coward as a milk-sop; and he who with the ripest impunity could put the greatest number of bottles "under his belt," was, de facto, regarded as "cock of the walk," and "prince of good fellows." The dinner hour being early, at the period in question, it was no uncommon thing to witness welldressed men staggering along the streets during broad day-light, in a state of mellow elevation. .If such phenomena elicited any comment from passing critics, it was merely to the effect that Sir John this, or the Laird of that, had been at a party. As for the police or the ecclesiastical authorities taking cognizance of such escaades, the thing was infinitely too preposterous even to dream of. So long as the topers gave a wide berth to murder or manslaughter, the propriety of their conduct never was called in question. At the epoch under manipulation, Bacchus was no where more religiously worshipped than in Dumbartonshire, in the West of Scotland. Indeed the bibulous prowess possessed by the landowners of that district of North Britain, had long been matter of proverbial notoriety; and people used to talk of Dumbartonshire Lairds as types of everything that was commendable and chivalrous, so far as unstinted devotion to the wine-cup was concerned. There dwelt at the time to which our narrative has reference, in the vicinage of Kilpatrick, on the banks of the Clyde, a landowner named and designated Mungo Mills of Caldercruicks. The aforesaid village, it may be stated in passing, is famed as being the reputed birthplace of the Saint, to whose special tutelage Ireland is by popular voice consigned. |