Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character eBook

Edward Bannerman Ramsay
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 542 pages of information about Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character.

Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character eBook

Edward Bannerman Ramsay
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 542 pages of information about Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character.
girl, and comes of a decent family.  She has a sister married upon a Seceding minister at Kirkcaldy.  But I hear he expects to be transported soon.  She was brought up in one of the hospitals here.  Her father had been a souter and a pawky chiel enough, but was doited for many years, and her mother was sair dottled.  We have been greatly interested in the hospital where Eppie was educate, and intended getting up a bazaar for it, and would have asked you to help us, as we were most anxious to raise some additional funds, when one of the Bailies died and left it feuing-stances to the amount of 5000 pounds, which was really a great mortification.  I am not a good hand of write, and therefore shall stop.  I am very tired, and have been gantin[72] for this half-hour, and even in correspondence gantin’ may be smittin’[73].  The kitchen[74] is just coming in, and I feel a smell of tea, so when I get my four hours, that will refresh me and set me up again.—­I am, your affectionate aunt, ISABEL DINGWALL.”

This letter, then, we suppose written by a very old Forfarshire lady to her niece in England, and perhaps the young lady who received it might answer it in a style as strange to her aunt as her aunt’s is to her, especially if she belonged to that lively class of our young female friends who indulge a little in phraseology which they have imbibed from their brothers, or male cousins, who have, perhaps for their amusement, encouraged them in its use.  The answer, then, might be something like this; and without meaning to be severe or satirical upon our young lady friends, I may truly say that, though I never heard from one young lady all these fast terms, I have heard the most of them separately from many:—­

“My Dear Aunty—­Many thanks for your kind letter and its enclosure.  From my not knowing Scotch, I am not quite up to the mark, and some of the expressions I don’t twig at all.  Willie is absent for a few days, but when he returns home he will explain it; he is quite awake on all such things.  I am glad you are pleased that Willie and I are now spliced.  I am well aware that you will hear me spoken of in some quarters as a fast young lady.  A man here had the impudence to say that when he visited my husband’s friends he would tell them so.  I quietly and civilly replied, ‘You be blowed!’ So don’t believe him.  We get on famously at present.  Willie comes home from the office every afternoon at five.  We generally take a walk before dinner, and read and work if we don’t go out; and I assure you we are very jolly.  We don’t know many people here yet.  It is rather a swell neighbourhood; and if we can’t get in with the nobs, depend upon it we will never take up with any society that is decidedly snobby.  I daresay the girl you are sending will be very useful
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Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.