eggs. It spoils
the voice. Fergus Teeman had a cutting out of the Glasgow _Weekly
Flail_, an able paper which is the Saturday Bible of those parts. This
extract said that Adelina Patti could not sing for five hours after ham
and eggs. It is just the same with preaching. Fergus, therefore, read
this to the candidates, and gave them for breakfast plain bread and
butter (best Irish cooking, 6-1/2d. per pound).

Fergus was an orthodox man. His first question was, "How long are you
out of the college?" His next, "Were you under Professor Robertson?" His
third, "Do ye haud wi' hymn-singin', street-preachin', revival meetings,
and novel-reading?"

From the answers to these questions Fergus Teeman formed his own short
leet. It was a very short one. There was only the Rev. Farish Farintosh
upon it. He took "cent.-per-cent." in the examination. Some of the
others made a point or two in their host's estimation, but Farish
Farintosh cleared the paper. He was just out of college that very
month--which was true. (But he did not say that he had been detained a
year or two, endeavouring to overcome the strange scruples of the
Examination Board.) He had studied under Professor Robertson, and had
frequently proved him wrong to his very face in the class, till the
students could not keep from laughing (which, between ourselves, was a
lie). He was no hypocrite, advanced critic, or teetotaler, and would
scorn to say he was. (He smelled Fergus Teeman's breath. He had been a
staunch teetotaler at another vacancy the Saturday before.) He would not
open a hymn-book for thirty pounds. This was the very man for Fergus
Teeman. So they made a night of it, and consumed five "rake" of hot
water. Hot water is good for the preaching.

But, strange to say, when the day of the voting came, the congregation
would by no means have the Reverend Farish Farintosh, though his claims
were vehemently urged by the grocer in a speech, with strange blanks in
the places where the strong words would have come on other occasions.
They elected instead a mere nobody of a young beardless boy, who had
been a year or two in a city mission, and whose only recommendation was
that he had very successfully worked among the poor of his district.

Fergus Teeman stated his opinions of the new minister, across his
counter, often and vehemently.

"The laddie kens nae mair nor a guano-bag. There's nocht in him but what
the spoon pits intil him. He hasna the spunk o' a rabbit. I