whiteness,
She cometh to the twining none may twain in sunder;
While to marriage merriment wakes the organ's thunder,
And the Lord doth give us all His heavenly brightness_.

_Then like early roses, girt by daffodillies,
Goes the troop of maidens, moving rhythmically,
Roses of the mountains, flowers of the valley,
Hill rose and plain rose and white vale lilies_.

PART I

There is no doubt that any committee on ministerial inefficiency would
have made short work of the Reverend Ebenezer Skinner, minister of the
Townend Kirk in Cairn Edward--that is, if it had been able to
distinguish the work he did from the work that he got the credit for.
Some people have the gift, fortunate or otherwise, of obtaining credit
for the work of others, and transferring to the shoulders of their
neighbours the responsibility of their blunders.

Yet, on the whole, the Townend minister had not been fairly dealt with,
for, if ever man was the product of environment, that man was the
minister of the "Laigh" or Townend Kirk. Now, Ebenezer Skinner was a
model subject for a latter-day biography, for he was born of poor but
honest parents, who resolved that their little Ebenezer should one day
"wag his head in a pulpit," if it cost them all that they possessed.

The early days of the future minister were therefore passed in the
acquisition of the Latin rudiments, a task which he performed to the
satisfaction of the dominie who taught him. He became letter-perfect in
repetition of all the rules, and pridefully glib in reeling off the
examples given in the text. He was the joy of the memory-lesson hour,
and the master's satisfaction was only damped when this prodigy of
accurate knowledge applied himself to the transference of a few lines of
English into a dead language. The result was not inspiring, but by
perseverance Ebenezer came even to this task without the premonition of
more egregious failure than was the custom among pupils of country
schools in his day.

Ebenezer went up to Edinburgh one windy October morning, and for the
first time in his life saw a university and a tramcar. The latter
astonished him very much; but in the afternoon he showed four new comers
the way to the secretary's office in the big cavern to the left of the
entrance of the former, wide-throated like the portal of Hades.

He took a lodging in Simon Square, because some one told him that
Carlyle had lodged there when he came up to