gave him the
money, and for months after never saw his face. Finally she wrote asking
an interview. He came, and she tartly said, "Did you not say, Mr.
Rogers, that if I gave you L200, you would marry me?" "Certainly I did,"
said the cunning minister, "and _I'm ready to marry you whenever you
produce your man: where is he_?" This anecdote shows the difficulty of
being unambiguous when speaking English, and furnishes an argument for
the adoption of French as the language of courtship as well as of
diplomacy.

The same foxy ecclesiastic wished two things, both of which his heritors
flatly refused: (a) a new manse, and (b) a site with a wide
prospect. Finding them intractable, he professed humility, and craved
merely a species of scaffolding to buttress up one of the walls of the
old manse. The heritors marvelled a little at the strange request, but,
glad of being saved from the cost of a new building, authorised the
buying of some sturdy joists to prop up a wall that the minister averred
was off the plumb. No sooner was the buttressing timber in position than
Mr. Rogers appeared with a violent complaint in the Sheriff Court,
declaring that the manse was like to fall about his ears, and that the
heritors had palpably admitted the danger by erecting a scaffold. The
Sheriff expressed strong disapproval of the heritors' stinginess, and
ordered them to get a new manse built for the minister. Now as to the
site! To spite Mr. Rogers, the heritors determined to deprive him of a
good view, and directed the St. Andrews builder to erect the new manse
down in the valley on a broad bank by a burnside. The master-builder
placed pegs and marks in the ground at the prescribed place and returned
to St. Andrews, telling his workmen to proceed next day to begin the
work, and mentioning that they would know the site by marks he had
placed there. At cockcrow the minister was afoot, busy transferring the
pegs to the summit of a lovely knoll. The tradesmen came out to the
country, and looking for the site found it on the hill-top and began
their work. After they had been a week or more on the walls, out from
St. Andrews came the master to see how his men were progressing. He came
near a complete collapse when he saw his men on the hill instead of in
the valley. He spoke winged words to them, but it was too late. In such
fashion did Mr. Rogers outwit his heritors. I regret that no literary
relics of this acute divine are to be had. He seems to