lity, that Mr.
MacWheep is perfectly within his rights; and then, as that estimable
person has by this time lost any thread he ever possessed, the
Presbytery passes to the next business--with the high spirit of men
returning from a holiday. Carmichael used, indeed, to relate how, in a
great stress of business, some one moved that the Presbytery should
adjourn for dinner, and the court argued for thirty minutes, with many
precedents, whether such a motion--touching as it did the standing
orders--could even be discussed, and, with an unnecessary prodigality
of testimony, he used to give perorations which improved with every
telling.

The love of law diffused through the Presbytery became incarnate in the
clerk, who was one of the most finished specimens of his class in the
Scottish Kirk. His sedate appearance, bald, polished head, fringed
with pure white hair, shrewd face, with neatly cut side whiskers, his
suggestion of unerring accuracy and inexhaustible memory, his attitude
for exposition--holding his glasses in his left hand and enforcing his
decision with the little finger of the right hand--carried conviction
even to the most disorderly. Ecclesiastical radicals, boiling over
with new schemes, and boasting to admiring circles of MacWheeps that
they would not be brow-beaten by red-tape officials, became
ungrammatical before that firm gaze, and ended in abject surrender.
Self-contained and self-sufficing, the clerk took no part in debate,
save at critical moments to lay down the law, but wrote his minutes
unmoved through torrents of speech on every subject, from the
Sustentation Fund to the Union between England and Scotland, and even
under the picturesque eloquence of foreign deputies, whose names he
invariably requested should be handed to him, written legibly on a
sheet of paper. On two occasions only he ceased from writing: when Dr.
Dowbiggin discussed a method of procedure--then he watched him over his
spectacles in hope of a nice point; or when some enthusiastic brother
would urge the Presbytery to issue an injunction on the sin of Sabbath
walking--then the clerk would abandon his pen in visible despair, and
sitting sideways on his chair and supporting his head by that same
little finger, would face the Presbytery with an expression of reverent
curiosity on his face why the Almighty was pleased to create such a
man. His preaching was distinguished for orderliness, and was much
sought after for Fast days. I