eaten away that he couldn't decipher or announce
the text. He was not a man, however, to be embarrassed or taken aback by
a matter of this sort, but at once intimated the state of matters to the
congregation,--"My brethren, I canna tell ye the text, for the mice hae
eaten it; but we'll just begin whaur the mice left aff, and when I come
to it I'll let you ken."

In the year 1843, shortly after the Disruption, a parish minister had
left the manse and removed to about a mile's distance. His pony got
loose one day, and galloped down the road in the direction of the old
glebe. The minister's man in charge ran after the pony in a great fuss,
and when passing a large farm-steading on the way, cried out to the
farmer, who was sauntering about, but did not know what had taken
place--"Oh, sir, did _ye_ see the minister's shault?" "No, no," was the
answer,--"but what's happened?" "Ou, sir, fat do ye think? the
minister's shault's _got lowse_ frae his tether, an' I'm frichtened he's
ta'en the road doun to the auld glebe." "Weel-a-wicht!"--was the shrewd
clever rejoinder of the farmer, who was a keen supporter of the old
parish church, "I wad _na_ wonder at _that_. An' I'se warrant, gin the
minister was gettin' _lowse_ frae _his_ tether, he wad jist tak the
same road."

An old clerical friend upon Speyside, a confirmed bachelor, on going up
to the pulpit one Sunday to preach, found, after giving out the psalm,
that he had forgotten his sermon. I do not know what his objections were
to his leaving the pulpit, and going to the manse for his sermon, but he
preferred sending his old confidential housekeeper for it. He
accordingly stood up in the pulpit, stopped the singing which had
commenced, and thus accosted his faithful domestic:--"Annie; I say,
Annie, _we've_ committed a mistak the day. Ye maun jist gang your waa's
hame, and ye'll get my sermon oot o' my breek-pouch, an' we'll sing to
the praise o' the Lord till ye come back again." Annie, of course, at
once executed her important mission, and brought the sermon out of "the
breek-pouch," and the service, so far as we heard, was completed without
further interruption.

My dear friend, the late Rev. Dr. John Hunter, told me an anecdote very
characteristic of the unimaginative matter-of-fact Scottish view of
matters. One of the ministers of Edinburgh, a man of dry humour, had a
daughter who had for some time passed the period of youth and of
beauty. She had become an Episcopalian,