, for he had not the _opportunity_
to transgress. So, when his master asserted, "Jemmy, you are drunk!"
Jemmy very quietly answered, "Indeed, sir, I wish I wur." At another
mansion, notorious for scanty fare, a gentleman was inquiring of the
gardener about a dog which some time ago he had given to the laird. The
gardener showed him a lank greyhound, on which the gentleman said, "No,
no; the dog I gave your master was a mastiff, not a greyhound;" to which
the gardener quietly answered, "Indeed, ony dog micht sune become a
greyhound by stopping here."

From a friend and relative, a minister of the Established Church of
Scotland, I used to hear many characteristic stories. He had a curious
vein of this sort of humour in himself, besides what he brought out from
others. One of his peculiarities was a mortal antipathy to the whole
French nation, whom he frequently abused in no measured terms. At the
same time he had great relish of a glass of claret, which he considered
the prince of all social beverages. So he usually finished off his
antigallican tirades, with the reservation, "But the bodies brew the
braw drink." He lived amongst his own people, and knew well the habits
and peculiarities of a race gone by. He had many stories connected with
the pastoral relation between minister and people, and all such stories
are curious, not merely for their amusement, but from the illustration
they afford us of that peculiar Scottish humour which we are now
describing. He had himself, when a very young boy, before he came up to
the Edinburgh High School, been at the parochial school where he
resided, and which, like many others, at that period, had a considerable
reputation for the skill and scholarship of the master. He used to
describe school scenes rather different, I suspect, from school scenes
in our day. One boy, on coming late, explained that the cause had been a
regular pitched battle between his parents, with the details of which he
amused his school-fellows; and he described the battle in vivid and
Scottish Homeric terms: "And eh, as they faucht, and they faucht,"
adding, however, with much complacency, "but my minnie dang, she
did tho'."

There was a style of conversation and quaint modes of expression between
ministers and their people at that time, which, I suppose, would seem
strange to the present generation; as, for example, I recollect a
conversation between this relative and one of his parishioners of this
descript