“ Bell was alone at the farm. What an opportunity to work one’s way up to a proposal! T’nowhead was so overrun with children that such a chance seldom occurred, except on a Sabbath. Sanders, doubtless, was off to propose, and he, Sam’l, was left behind.
The suspense was terrible. Sam’l and Sanders had both known all along that Bell would take the first of the two who asked her. Even those who thought her proud admitted that she was modest. Bitterly the weaver repented having waited so long. Now it was too late. In ten minutes Sanders would be at T’nowhead; in an hour all would be over. ”

“ Bell was not in the kirk. There being an infant of six months in the house it was a question of either Lisbeth or the lassie’s staying at home with him, and though Lisbeth was unselfish in a general way, she could not resist the delight of going to church. She had nine children besides the baby, and, being but a woman, it was the pride of her life to march them into the T’nowhead pew, so well watched that they dared not misbehave, and so tightly packed that they could not fall. ”

“ Its chairs, tables, and stools were scoured by her to the whiteness of Rob Angus’s sawmill boards, and the muslin blind on the window was starched like a child’s pinafore. Bell was brave, too, as well as energetic. Once Thrums had been overrun with thieves. ”

“ He lived just where that distinguished but impecunious line plunges into a moss-covered granite wilderness of moor and bog, where there is not more than a shepherd’s hut to the half-dozen miles, and where the passage of a train is the occasion of commotion among scattered groups of black-faced sheep. Gavin Balchrystie’s three miles of P.P.R. metals gave him little work, but a good deal of healthy exercise. ”

“ He could not swing himself into the saddle without making two attempts and holding Jess’s mane. Neither can you “warstle” through the peat-bogs and snow-drifts for forty winters without a touch of rheumatism. But they were honourable scars, and for such risks of life men get the Victoria Cross in other fields. MacLure got nothing but the secret affection of the Glen, which knew that none had ever done one tenth as much for it as this ungainly, twisted, battered figure, and I have seen a Drumtochty face soften at the sight of MacLure limping to his horse. ”

“ If the rain was pouring at the junction, then Drumtochty stood two minutes longer through sheer native dourness till each man had a cascade from the tail of his coat, and hazarded the suggestion, half-way to Kildrummie, that it had been “a bit scrowie,” and “scrowie” being as far short of a “shoor” as a “shoor” fell below “weet.” ”

“ My gudesire’s head was like to turn; he forgot baith siller and receipt, and downstairs he banged; but, as he ran, the shrieks came fainter and fainter; there was a deep-drawn shivering groan, and word gaed through the castle that the laird was dead.
Weel, away came my gudesire wi’ his finger in his mouth, and his best hope was that Dougal had seen the money-bag and heard the laird speak of writing the receipt. The young laird, now Sir John, came from Edinburgh to see things put to rights. Sir John and his father never ‘greed weel. ”

“ THRAWN JANET, By Robert Louis Stevenson
The Reverend Murdoch Soulis was long minister of the moorland parish of Balweary, in the vale of Dule. A severe, bleak-faced old man, dreadful to his hearers, he dwelt in the last years of his life, without relative or servant or any human company, in the small and lonely manse under the Hanging Shaw. ”

“ The fact is monstrous, and demands the immediate and serious interference of the legislature.”
“It is a burning shame,” said I, fully alive to the manifold advantages of a premium.
“I’ll tell you what, Dunshunner,” rejoined M’Corkindale, “it’s no use going on in this way. We haven’t shown half pluck enough. These fellows consider us as snobs because we don’t take the bull by the horns. Now’s the time for a bold stroke. The public are quite ready to subscribe for anything—and we’ll start a railway for ourselves.”
“Start a railway with three hundred pounds of capital!” ”

“ Pshaw, man! you don’t know what you’re talking about—we’ve a great deal more capital than that. Have not I told you, seventy times over, that everything a man has—his coat, his hat, the tumblers he drinks from, nay, his very corporeal existence—is absolute marketable capital? ”

“ And Sir John, when he had riped the turret weel, led my gudesire into the dining-parlour, and took him by the hand, and spoke kindly to him, and said he was sorry he should have doubted his word, and that he would hereafter be a good master to him, to make amends.
“And now, Steenie,” said Sir John, “although this vision of yours tends, on the whole, to my father’s credit as an honest man, that he should, even after his death, desire to see justice done to a poor man like you, yet you are sensible that ill-dispositioned men might make bad constructions upon it concerning his soul’s health. ”

“ Nothing effects so great a metamorphosis in the bearing of the outer man as a sudden change of fortune. The anemone of the garden differs scarcely more from its unpretending prototype of the woods than Robert M’Corkindale, Esq., Secretary and Projector of the Glenmutchkin Railway, differed from Bob M’Corkindale, the seedy frequenter of “The Crow.” ”

“ Now then, let’s fix the number of shares. This is our first experiment, and I think we ought to be moderate. No sound political economist is avaricious. Let us say twelve thousand, at twenty pounds apiece.”
“So be it.”
“Well then, that’s arranged. I’ll see Sawley and the rest to-morrow, settle with Solder, and then write out the prospectus. You look in upon me in the evening, and we’ll revise it together. Now, by your leave, let’s have a Welsh rabbit and another tumbler to drink success and prosperity to the Glenmutchkin Railway.” ”

“ Hutcheon had nae will to the wark, but he had stood by Dougal in battle and broil, and he wad not fail him at this pinch; so doun the carles sat ower a stoup of brandy, and Hutcheon, who was something of a clerk, would have read a chapter of the Bible; but Dougal would hear naething but a blaud of Davie Lindsay, whilk was the waur preparation.
When midnight came, and the house was quiet as the grave, sure enough the silver whistle sounded as sharp and shrill as if Sir Robert was blowing it; and up got the twa auld serving-men, and tottered into the room where the dead man lay. ”

“ Sam’l was a weaver in the tenements, and Sanders a coal-carter, whose trade-mark was a bell on his horse’s neck that told when coal was coming. Being something of a public man, Sanders had not, perhaps, so high a social position as Sam’l, but he had succeeded his father on the coal-cart, while the weaver had already tried several trades. It had always been against Sam’l, too, that once when the kirk was vacant he had advised the selection of the third minister who preached for it on the ground that it became expensive to pay a large number of candidates. ”

“ Drumtochty was accustomed to break every law of health, except wholesome food and fresh air, and yet had reduced the psalmist’s furthest limit to an average life-rate. Our men made no difference in their clothes for summer or winter, Drumsheugh and one or two of the larger farmers condescending to a top-coat on Sabbath, as a penalty of their position, and without regard to temperature. They wore their blacks at a funeral, refusing to cover them with anything, out of respect to the deceased, and standing longest in the kirkyard when the north wind was blowing across a hundred miles of snow. ”

“ Attention, whether from male or female, tickles the vanity; and although I have a reasonable, and, I hope, not unwholesome regard for the gratification of my other appetites, I confess that this same vanity is by far the most poignant of the whole. ”

“ MacLure compassed the precious arrival with observances till he was securely seated in Drumsheugh’s dog-cart,—a vehicle that lent itself to history,—with two full-sized plaids added to his equipment—Drumsheugh and Hillocks had both been requisitioned; and MacLure wrapped another plaid round a leather case, which was placed below the seat with such reverence as might be given to the Queen’s regalia. ”

“ What his wife mentioned of his being a tale-teller as well as a musician now occurred to me; and as, you know, I like tales of superstition, I begged to have a specimen of his talent as we went along.
“It is very true,” said the blind man, “that when I am tired of scraping thairm or singing ballants I whiles make a tale serve the turn among the country bodies; and I have some fearsome anes, that make the auld carlines shake on the settle, and the bits o’ bairns skirl on their minnies out frae their beds. ”

“ Syne Mr. Soulis gaed into his study amang a’ his books. It’s a lang, laigh, mirk chalmer, perishin’ cauld in winter, an’ no very dry even in the top o’ the simmer, for the manse stands near the burn. Sae doun he sat, and thocht of a’ that had come an’ gane since he was in Ba’weary, an’ his hame, an’ the days when he was a bairn an’ ran daffin’ on the braes; and that black man aye ran in his heid like the owercome of a sang. Aye the mair he thocht, the mair he thocht o’ the black man. ”

“ Can ye no think o’ somethin’ tae help Annie, and gie her back her man and bairnies?” and Tammas searched the doctor’s face in the cold, weird light.
“There’s nae pooer in heaven or airth like luve,” Marget said to me afterward; “it mak’s the weak strong and the dumb tae speak. Oor herts were as water afore Tammas’s words, an’ a’ saw the doctor shake in his saddle. A’ never kent till that meenut hoo he hed a share in a’body’s grief, an’ carried the heaviest wecht o’ a’ the Glen. A’ peetied him wi’ Tammas lookin’ at him sae wistfully, as if he hed the keys o’ life an’ deith in his hands. ”

“ A’ wes never worthy o’ her, the bonniest, snoddest (neatest) , kindliest lass in the Glen. . . . A’ never cud mak’ oot hoo she ever lookit at me, ‘at hesna hed ae word tae say about her till it’s ower-late. . . . She didna cuist up to me that a’ wesna worthy o’ her—no her; but aye she said, ‘Yir ma ain gudeman, and nane cud be kinder tae me.’ . . . An’ a’ wes minded tae be kind, but a’ see noo mony little trokes a’ micht hae dune for her, and noo the time is by. . . . Naebody kens hoo patient she wes wi’ me, and aye made the best o’ me, an’ never pit me tae shame afore the fouk. ”

“ The time has been when—according to Washington Irving and other veracious historians—a young man had no sooner got into difficulties than a guardian angel appeared to him in a dream, with the information that at such and such a bridge, or under such and such a tree, he might find, at a slight expenditure of labour, a gallipot secured with bladder, and filled with glittering tomans ”

“ A certain degree of starchness is indispensable for a railway director, if he means to go forward in his high calling and prosper; he must abandon all juvenile eccentricities, and aim at the appearance of a decided enemy to free trade in the article of Wild Oats. Accordingly, as the first step toward respectability, I eschewed coloured waistcoats and gave out that I was a marrying man. No man under forty, unless he is a positive idiot, will stand forth as a theoretical bachelor. It is all nonsense to say that there is anything unpleasant in being courted. ”

“ Miss Bal—and so forth—has a true fount of pathos and humour. In what touching language she chronicles the death of two young lambs which fell down into one of the puddles they call rivers down there, and were either drowned or choked with the dirt:
“‘They were two bonny, bonny lambs, That played upon the daisied lea, And loudly mourned their woolly dams Above the drumly flowing Dee.’
“How touchingly simple!” continued the junior reporter, buckling up his sleeves to enjoy himself, and feeling himself born to be a “Saturday Reviewer.” ”

“ He stepped out upon the road, but there was naebody there; he gaed a’ ower the gairden, but na, nae black man. At the hinder end, and a bit feard as was but natural, he lifted the hasp and into the manse; and there was Janet M’Clour before his een, wi’ her thrawn craig, and nane sae pleased to see him. And he aye minded sinsyne, when first he set his een upon her, he had the same cauld and deidy grue.
“Janet,” says he, “have you seen a black man?”
“A black man?” quo’ she. “Save us a’! Ye ‘re no wise, minister. There’s nae black man in a’ Ba’weary.” ”

“ She was nae great speaker; folk usually let her gang her ain gait, an’ she let them gang theirs, wi’ neither fair guid-e’en nor fair guid-day; but when she buckled to, she had a tongue to deave the miller. Up she got, an’ there wasnae an auld story in Ba’weary but she gart somebody lowp for it that day; they couldnae say ae thing but she could say twa to it; till, at the hinder end, the guidwives up and claught haud of her, and clawed the coats aff her back, and pu’d her doun the clachan to the water o’ Dule, to see if she were a witch or no, soum or droun. ”

“ Two hours later MacLure came out from Annie’s room and laid hold of Tammas, a heap of speechless misery by the kitchen fire, and carried him off to the barn, and spread some corn on the threshing-floor, and thrust a flail into his hands.
“Noo we ‘ve tae begin, an’ we ‘ill no be dune for an’ ‘oor, and ye ‘ve tae lay on without stoppin’ till a’ come for ye; an’ a’ ‘ll shut the door tae haud in the noise, an’ keep yir dog beside ye, for there maunna be a cheep aboot the house for Annie’s sake.” ”

“ The saughs tossed an’ maned thegether, a long sigh cam’ ower the hills, the flame o’ the can’le was blawn aboot; an’ there stood the corp of Thrawn Janet, wi’ her grogram goun an’ her black mutch, wi’ the heid aye upon the shouther, an’ the girn still upon the face o’ ‘t,—leevin’, ye wad hae said—deid, as Mr. Soulis weel kenned,—upon the threshold o’ the manse.
It’s a strange thing that the saul of man should be thirled into his perishable body; but the minister saw that, an’ his heart didnae break. ”