ing at the usual hour for breakfast, when they went to
his bedside they found him dead! The excitement had been too much--mind
and body had given way--and the half-idiot of earth awoke to the glories
and the bliss of his Redeemer's presence.

Analogous with the language of the _defective_ intellect is the language
of the imperfectly formed intellect, and I have often thought there was
something very touching and very fresh in the expression of feelings and
notions by children. I have given examples before, but the following is,
to my taste, a charming specimen:--A little boy had lived for some time
with a very penurious uncle, who took good care that the child's health
should not be injured by over-feeding. The uncle was one day walking
out, the child at his side, when a friend accosted him, accompanied by a
greyhound. While the elders were talking, the little fellow, never
having seen a dog so slim and slight of form, clasped the creature round
the neck with the impassioned cry, "Oh, doggie, doggie, and div ye live
wi' your uncle tae, that ye are so thin?"

In connection with funerals, I am indebted to the kindness of Lord
Kinloch for a characteristic anecdote of cautious Scottish character in
the west country. It was the old fashion, still practised in some
districts, to carry the coffin to the grave on long poles, or "spokes,"
as they were commonly termed. There were usually two bearers abreast on
each side. On a certain occasion one of the two said to his companion,
"I'm awfu' tired wi' carryin'." "Do you _carry_?" was the interrogatory
in reply. "Yes; what do you do?" "Oh," said the other, "I aye _lean_."
His friend's fatigue was at once accounted for.

I am strongly tempted to give an account of a parish functionary in the
words of a kind correspondent from Kilmarnock, although communicated in
the following very flattering terms:--"In common with every Scottish man
worthy of the name, I have been delighted with your book, and have the
ambition to add a pebble to the cairn, and accordingly send you a
_bellman story_; it has, at least, the merit of being unprinted and
unedited."

The incumbent of Craigie parish, in this district of Ayrshire, had asked
a Mr. Wood, tutor in the Cairnhill family, to officiate for him on a
particular Sunday. Mr. Wood, however, between the time of being asked
and the appointed day, got intimation of the dangerous illness of his
father; in the hurry of setting out to see him, he forgot