Page:Monthly scrap book, for October.pdf/9

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SCRAP BOOK.
9

threads shot out by minute spiders, who are thus wafted by the wind from place to place.

The chief business of October, in the great economy of nature, is dissemination, which is performed among other means by the high winds which now return. Art imitates her as usual, and rows and plants also. We have already mentioned the gardener. This is the time for the domestic cultivator of flowers to finish planting as well, especially the bulbs that are intended to flower early in spring. And as the chief business of nature this month is dissemination or vegetable birth, so its chief beauty arises from vegetable death itself. We need not tell our readers we allude to the changing leaves with all their lights and shades of green, amber, red, light red, light and dark green, white, brown, russet, and yellow of all sorts.


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PASSAGES IN A PROVOST'S LIFE.

THE PRESS-GANG.

During the same just and necessary war for all that was dear to us, in which the volunteers were raised, one of the severest trials happened to me that ever any magistrate was subjected to. I had, at the time, again subsided into an ordinary counsellor, but it so fell out, that by reason of Mr Shuttlethrift, who was then provost, having occasion and need to go into Glasgow upon some affairs of his own private concerns, he being interested in the Kilbeacon Cotton Mill and Mr Dalrye, the bailie, who should have acted for him being likewise from home, anent a plea he had with