INTRODUCTION.

Having been for several years in what Mrs MacLecket, my worthy landlady, calls a complaining way, I was persuaded by her advice to try the benefit of the sea air in the steam-boat to Greenock; and I found myself greatly advantaged by the same. I am not, however, sure that the benefit which my strength and appetite received in those sea voyages was so much owing to the change of air, and the wholesome fume of the salt-water that I breathed, as from the conversible and talkative company which I found among the other passengers; by which my spirits were maintained in a state of jocund temperance, and my thoughts so lifted out of the cares of business, that I was, for the time, a new creature, bringing back with me to behind the counter a sort of youthiness that lasted sometimes more than a fortnight; keeping off what Mrs MacLecket called the hypochonders, till I again fell out of order, by that constant constipation to the shop, which I now understand was the original cause of all my complaints.

I have often since reflected on my jaunts and travels, and the many things that I saw, as well as the extraordinary narrations, of which I was participant in the hearing; and it seemed to me, that I could not better employ my time and talent, during the long winter nights, than in putting down some account of the most remarkable of the stories which medicated so veritably towards the gradual restoration of that brisk and circling state of my blood, that has made me, in a manner, as Mrs MacLecket judiciously says, a very satisfactory man.

When I had tried my hand at two or three of the stories, I read them over to Mr Thomas Sweeties, my neighbour, the grocer, and he thought them so vastly entertaining, that, by his encouragement, together with the pleasure Mrs MacLecket seemed to take in the bits she now and then heard, when she could spare time from her householdry to listen, I was led to proceed farther and farther, until I compiled this book; which I hope will reward the courteous reader who may vouchsafe to favour it with an attentive perusal, as much as it did to me in the inditing, and no author can wish his reader a more delectable benefaction.