Much hus been said and written lately of the depopulation of the Highland and Islands, for, as everyone knows, nothing is harder than to rebuild' @ peasantry. The crofter life will rarely be taken Ly those in whom the crofter out-Took, sentiment, and association ave not. been bred or in whom they have once been broken. One ult be to that manier reared, if not born, No adult popula.ion could ver be brought to re-fil Strath-lass, for instance, that once teen\- {ng mother of men, But heve comes in one of the most cheering sights to be witnessed in ull broad Seot-
Tu. the nother of Trvernest-shire such fa main seem to be very pro life. Bub that. isa hasty inference. The young caterans clustered about the Goors, or pelting along the roads, are many of them Highland child-ven only by adoption. The Poor Law authorities of several. cities Vourd their derelicts out in this way, and the majority go to High-Tand homes. Iv ts rarely other than a true home that they find, - Foster parenthood is deeply rooted in the Highland tradition, The city: waits are absorbed in the crofter house: hold, and in after years, when they have gone their own way. in the world, they honour the tie by many filial pieties. They have certainly all the air, the spring-gait, the Courtesy, and. the mannerisms of Highland children, "There is_no salvage more exciting to the agitation than that of these slum mites watted to the hills and a similared in the gracious Kinship of the Macgillavries and Macgreors, The wind on the heath is theirs. They will go forth with the flash and trod ottmorice that the "sweetest treasure of youth. And few—very few—even reappear where the Poor Law found them.
Obituary At 23 Eildon Street, Edinburgh, on 23rd instant, Annie Shaw Trot ter, widow of James Tait, Amoy, and Kolansco House, Porto-
The Haggis Legend A lively article on Seotland's alleged national dish has been cor
Riben, of Colombo, and a couple of per by the Rev. ©. V. A. Mace tea toa Gaagow evening news
Stories in it are to0 good to be left in the columns of a local journal, however wide its circulation. the first sory the Rev. gentleman says—in the kindness of her heart, wall asin the exuberance of her Scottish patriotism, my sister once thy haggis t0 an. Army ficer in France—an_ insular Eng-fishman, whose frat thought. as he viewed it was of a sleeping hedge-Tog, but whose spoken verdict, when eked as to how Te ought to be eaten twas, "Ie looks as if it had been tatou already."
The other story Aso takes In January ing been asked to propose the immortal Memory at the annual celebration in an Offi-ser sees, I determined to make no incorrect quotation from the Bard. I accordingly dispatched the following thing Burns for 25th January. Admittedly the cable was somewhat jeult to interpret, but, after a consultation in the study, they con-eluded that there was about to be celebrated a Scottish Festival, that.
as mess officer, was anxious to do things in the superlative, and accordingly wanted" large supply of haggis. After a feverish search for the necessary ingredie: involving much expenditure of time and energy, my sister duly got the haggises despatched—14 in number—just in the nick of time to catch the mail calculated to reach me for the 25th, On the 23rd a cheery, letter narrating all this, and advis- While ing me to expect haggises, was received by me, but, alas; mo poems And all the world frowns, grouses, of Burns which I had requested and] awaited. What on earth was I to He smiles, and cleans his clubs, and do with 14 haggises? But 1 set and with the aid of Scottish fnstinet, and a little sentiment, 1 succeeded in booking orders for' 11 out of the 14, and my temperature was again normal. Four weeks, however, elapsed without any trace of the haggises; and those who had ordered them, and in som cases already paid for them, began to express anxiety, gentle inquiry being followed by suspicious reminders amounting almost to threats. At the end of the fourth and most uncomfortable week, a letter from my sister threw light on the my-story and enabled me to explain. That letter I posted in the
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.