23
honour of being your chairman, and I merely took the liberty of adding to that honour, by making you my guests.—If I have done wrong, it was yourselves who set me the example.—I have no other apology to offer; so, here's wishing you all a merry new year when it comes."—"Ah, Logan, Logan," said Auldgavel, "you're the old man, I see, and there's no use talking to you; so, here's wishing you may spend the coming new-year as merry, but much wiser, at Loganhouse, than you did last." "Well, Auldgavel, I thank you for your friendly hint, for though it was owing to a mistake, I hope I shall lever see Loganhouse in such a state again. You must know, gentlemen, that I was from home, and only returned on Hogmanae, when I was told there was no whisky in the house. Now, you know, a man may as weel try to haud a young naig without a tether, as haud new'rs-day without drink; so I told one of the men to go to Kilmarnock for a cask; and what does the drunken idiot do, but takes in the sour-milk barrel, and brings it hame fu' to the bung, that's to say, as fu's himsel;—for he kent so little about what he was doing, that he filled a water-stoup wi' the drink, and left it in the kitchen; as for the rest o't, every one that liked went to the barrel wi' his dish, and helped himsel'. The consequence was, that the men got a' fu', and they filled the women fu'. The porridge in the morning, by mistake, was made from the whisky that was put in the water-stoup; but as none of the servants could sup them, they were given to the pigs and the poultry. The pigs soon got outrageous, and set a-yelling in a manner hat might have drowned the din of a hale reg'ment of pipers, tearing one another's snouts and lugs to tatters. The auld sow, trying to stand on her hind feet (for what folly will beast or body not do when
