“Ye dinna ken whar frae? - I'll tell you whar frae - frae hell; sic thoughts are the cormorants that sit on the apple trees in the devil's kail-yard, and the souls o the damned are the carcasses they mak their meat o.”
― John Galt, The Entail: or, The Lairds of Grippy

“The royal borough of Chucky Stanes, like every other town of the kind, enjoys an undue proportion of ladies in a state of single blessedness. The house I rented there belonged to Miss Beenie Needles, a venerable damsel of that description. Her father, far back in the last century, had held the dignity of Provost. In the plenitude of his magisterial pomp, he erected the edifice,where Miss Beeny, with her niece, Mrs, Greenknowe, the widow of a much respected surgeon, held court, or, more properly, sat in expectation of being courted.”
― John Galt, Lawrie Todd: or, The Settlers in the Woods