; and the poorer
parishioners forgave his innocent peculiarities, in consideration of his
unbounded charity; while the heritors, if they ridiculed the
abstractions of Mr. Cargill on some subjects, had the grace to recollect
that they had prevented him from suing an augmentation of stipend,
according to the fashion of the clergy around him, or from demanding at
their hands a new manse, or the repair of the old one. He once, indeed,
wished that they would amend the roof of his book-room, which "rained
in"[I-23] in a very pluvious manner; but receiving no direct answer from
our friend Meiklewham, who neither relished the proposal nor saw means
of eluding it, the minister quietly made the necessary repairs at his
own expense, and gave the heritors no farther trouble on the subject.

Such was the worthy divine whom our _bon vivant_ at the Cleikum Inn
hoped to conciliate by a good dinner and Cockburn's particular; an
excellent menstruum in most cases, but not likely to be very efficacious
on the present occasion.

FOOTNOTES:

[I-22] Note III.--Mago-Pico.

[I-23] _Scottice_, for "admitted the rain."

CHAPTER XVII.

THE ACQUAINTANCE.

'Twixt us thus the difference trims:--
Using head instead of limbs,
You have read what I have seen;
Using limbs instead of head,
I have seen what you have read--
Which way does the balance lean?

BUTLER.

Our traveller, rapid in all his resolutions and motions, strode stoutly
down the street, and arrived at the Manse, which was, as we have already
described it, all but absolutely ruinous. The total desolation and want
of order about the door, would have argued the place uninhabited, had it
not been for two or three miserable tubs with suds, or such like
sluttish contents, which were left there, that those who broke their
shins among them might receive a sensible proof, that "here the hand of
woman had been." The door being half off its hinges, the entrance was
for the time protected by a broken harrow, which must necessarily be
removed before entry could be obtained. The little garden, which might
have given an air of comfort to the old house had it been kept in any
order, was abandoned to a desolation, of which that of the sluggard was
only a type; and the minister's man, an attendant always proverbial for
doing half work, and who seemed in the present instance to do none, was
seen among docks and nettles, solacing himself with the few gooseberrie