148 NIMROD'S NORTHERN TOUR. 



tosh, Mr. Williamson," I presume, said f, "for it is most excellent 

 liquor ! " " If you will look on the head of the cork," he replied, " you 

 will know as much of it as I do;" and there, I found, very intelligibly 

 impressed on black wax, the following* words — Who the devil sent you 

 this? AW the remark that I made on this curious inscription was, that 

 I cared not who the devil sent me some of the same sort — nay, if it was 

 the devil himself I would forgive him ; for better no man has tasted. How 

 different said I to myself from those 



" Most poisonous compounds 



Which are the movers of a languishing death ; 

 But, though slow, deadly \" 



I have ever considered really good whiskey the most wholesome spirit 

 that is drunk by man, and I found no more effect, on my arrival at Kelso 

 to a seven o'clock dinner, from these two glasses of pretty stiff whiskey 

 toddy than I should have found had I been only drinking small beer. 

 Perhaps not so much ; for small beer and Scotch night air are not well 

 agreed. I have however reason to believe that a second glass of whiskey 

 toddy is not often indulged in by Williamson. He is not only a re- 

 markably sober man himself, but drunkenness, he told me, is a fault he 

 never looks over even once, in any man belonging to his department of 

 the duke's establishment, whatever good qualities the delinquent may 

 possess. Perhaps he is right ; for inasmuch as the doctrine of evil 

 communication corrupting good manners is no less true in philosophy 

 than in religion, it must surely be allowed to be applicable to the stable 

 and kennel. 



But it is surely now time that the minister's mare and Nimrod should 

 be on their return to Kelso; and particularly so as a thick fog was at this 



