A Lanarkshire minister (who died within the present century) was one of those unhappy persons, who, to use the words of a well known Scottish adage, “can never see green cheese but their een reels.”  He was extremely covetous and that not only of nice articles of food, but of many other things which do not generally excite the cupidity of the human heart.  The following story is in corroboration of this assertion:—­Being on a visit one day at the house of one of his parishioners, a poor lonely widow, living in a moorland part of the parish, he became fascinated by the charms of a little cast-iron pot, which happened at the time to be lying on the hearth, full of potatoes for the poor woman’s dinner, and that of her children.  He had never in his life seen such a nice little pot—­it was a perfect conceit of a thing—­it was a gem—­no pot on earth could match it in symmetry—­it was an object altogether perfectly lovely.  “Dear sake! minister,” said the widow, quite overpowered by the reverend man’s commendations of her pot; “if ye like the pot sae weel as a’ that, I beg ye’ll let me send it to the manse.  It’s a kind o’ orra (superfluous) pot wi’ us; for we’ve a bigger ane, that we use for ordinar, and that’s mair convenient every way for us.  Sae ye’ll just tak a present o’t.  I’ll send it ower the morn wi’ Jamie, when he gangs to the schule.”  “Oh!” said the minister, “I can by no means permit you to be at so much trouble.  Since you are so good as to give me the pot, I’ll just carry it home with me in my hand.  I’m so much taken with it, indeed, that I would really prefer carrying it myself.”  After much altercation between the minister and the widow, on this delicate point of politeness, it was agreed that he should carry home the pot himself.

Off then he trudged, bearing this curious little culinary article, alternately in his hand and under his arm, as seemed most convenient to him.  Unfortunately the day was warm, the way long, and the minister fat; so that he became heartily tired of his burden before he got half-way home.  Under these distressing circumstances, it struck him, that, if, instead of carrying the pot awkwardly at one side of his person, he were to carry it on his head, the burden would be greatly lightened; the principles of natural philosophy, which he had learned at college, informing him, that when a load presses directly and immediately upon any object, it is far less onerous than when it hangs at the remote end of a lever.  Accordingly, doffing his hat, which he resolved to carry home in his band, and having applied his handkerchief to his brow, he clapped the pot, in inverted fashion, upon his head, where, as the reader may suppose, it figured much like Mambrino’s helmet upon the crazed capital of Don Quixote, only a great deal more magnificent in shape and dimensions.  There was, at first, much relief and much comfort in this new mode of carrying the pot; but mark the result.  The unfortunate