The young minister demurred at this, and asked if he "might not introduce any other short prayer ?" "Ou ay," was the Doctor's quiet reply, "gif ye can gie us onything _better_." There is a story current of a sharp hit at the pretensions of a minister who required a little set down.

The scene was on a Monday by a burn near Inverness.

A stranger is fishing by a burn-side one Monday morning, when the parish minister accosts him from the other side of the stream thus:--"Good sport ?" "Not very." "I am also an angler," but, pompously, "I am a _fisher of men_." "Are you always successful ?" "Not very." "So I guessed, as I keeked into your creel[180] yesterday." At Banchory, on Deeside, some of the criticisms and remarks on sermons were very quaint and characteristic.

My cousin had asked the Leys grieve what he thought of a young man's preaching, who had been more successful in appropriating the words than the ideas of Dr.Chalmers.He drily answered, "Ou, Sir Thomas, just a floorish o' the surface." But the same hearer bore this unequivocal testimony to another preacher whom he really admired.

He was asked if he did not think the sermon long: "Na, I should nae hae thocht it lang an' I'd been sitting on thorns." I think the following is about as good a sample of what we call Scotch "pawky" as any I know:--A countryman had lost his wife and a favourite cow on the same day.