to Edinburgh on a verra useless job.”  On being asked what this useless work might be which engaged his pastor’s time and attention, he answered, “He’s gane to mak four men agree wha ne’er cast oot.”  The good-humoured and candid answer of a learned and rather long-winded preacher of the old school always appeared to me quite charming.  The good man was far from being a popular preacher, and yet he could not reduce his discourses below the hour and a half.  On being asked, as a gentle hint of their possibly needless length, if he did not feel tired after preaching so long, he replied, “Na, na, I’m no tired;” adding, however, with much naivete, “But, Lord, how tired the fowk whiles are.”

The late good kind-hearted Dr. David Dickson was fond of telling a story of a Scottish termagant of the days before kirk-session discipline had passed away.  A couple were brought before the court, and Janet, the wife, was charged with violent and undutiful conduct, and with wounding her husband by throwing a three-legged stool at his head.  The minister rebuked her conduct, and pointed out its grievous character, by explaining that just as Christ was head of his Church, so the husband was head of the wife; and therefore in assaulting him, she had in fact injured her own body.  “Weel,” she replied, “it’s come to a fine pass gin a wife canna kame her ain head;” “Ay, but, Janet,” rejoined the minister, “a three-legged stool is a thief-like bane-kame to scart yer ain head wi’!”

The following is a dry Scottish case, of a minister’s wife quietly “kaming her husband’s head.”  Mr. Mair, a Scotch minister, was rather short-tempered, and had a wife named Rebecca, whom for brevity’s sake he addressed as “Becky.”  He kept a diary, and among other entries, this one was very frequent—­“Becky and I had a rippet, for which I desire to be humble.”  A gentleman who had been on a visit to the minister went to Edinburgh, and told the story to a minister and his wife there; when the lady replied “Weel, he must have been an excellent man, Mr. Mair.  My husband and I sometimes too have ‘rippets,’ but catch him if he’s ever humble.”

Our object in bringing up and recording anecdotes of this kind is to elucidate the sort of humour we refer to, and to show it as a humour of past times.  A modern clergyman could hardly adopt the tone and manner of the older class of ministers—­men not less useful and beloved, on account of their odd Scottish humour, which indeed suited their time.  Could a clergyman, for instance, now come off from the trying position in which we have heard of a northern minister being placed, and by the same way through which he extricated himself with much good nature and quiet sarcasm?  A young man, sitting opposite to him in the front of the gallery, had been up late on the previous night, and had stuffed the cards with which he had been occupied into his coat pocket.  Forgetting the circumstance, he pulled out his handkerchief, and the cards all flew about.  The minister simply looked at him, and remarked, “Eh, man, your psalm-buik has been ill bund.”