ot day, during the old stage-coach system, I was going
down to Portobello, when the coachman drew up to take in a gentleman who
had hailed him on the road. He was evidently an Englishman--a fat man,
and in a perfect state of "thaw and dissolution" from the heat and dust.
He wiped himself, and exclaimed, as a remark addressed to the company
generally, "D----d hot it is." No one said anything for a time, till a
man in the corner slily remarked, "I dinna doubt, sir, but it may." The
cautiousness against committing himself unreservedly to any proposition,
however plausible, was quite delicious.

A more determined objection to giving a categorical answer occurred, as
I have been assured, in regard to a more profound question. A party
travelling on a railway got into deep discussion on theological
questions. Like Milton's spirits in Pandemonium, they had

"Reason'd high
Of providence, fore-knowledge, will, and fate--
Fix'd fate, free-will, fore-knowledge absolute;
And found no end, in wand'ring mazes lost."

A plain Scotsman present seemed much interested in these matters, and
having expressed himself as not satisfied with the explanations which
had been elicited in the course of discussion on a particular point
regarding predestination, one of the party said to him that he had
observed a minister, whom they all knew, in the adjoining compartment,
and that when the train stopped at the next station a few minutes, he
could go and ask _his_ opinion. The good man accordingly availed himself
of the opportunity to get hold of the minister, and lay their difficulty
before him. He returned in time to resume his own place, and when they
had started again, the gentleman who had advised him, finding him not
much disposed to voluntary communication, asked if he had seen the
minister. "O ay," he said, "he had seen him." "And did you propose the
question to him?" "O ay." "And what did he say?" "Oh, he just said he
didna ken; and what was mair he didna _care!_"

I have received the four following admirable anecdotes, illustrative of
dry Scottish pawky humour, from an esteemed minister of the Scottish
Church, the Rev. W. Mearns of Kinneff. I now record them nearly in the
same words as his own kind communication. The anecdotes are as
follow:--An aged minister of the old school, Mr. Patrick Stewart, one
Sunday took to the pulpit a sermon without observing that the first leaf
or two were so worn and