We have an Elder, a Professor of Biblical Criticism, a Majesty's Chaplain, and even an ex-Moderator under our roof, and they are equally divided between the Free and the Established bodies.
Mrs.M'Collop herself is a pillar of the Free Kirk, but she has no prejudice in lodgers, and says so long as she 'mak's her rent she doesna care aboot their releegious principles.' Miss Diggity-Dalgety is the sole representative of United Presbyterianism in the household, and she is somewhat gloomy in Assembly time.

To belong to a dissenting body, and yet to cook early and late for the purpose of fattening one's religious rivals, is doubtless trying to the temper; and then she asserts that 'meenisters are aye tume [empty].' "You must put away your Scottish ballads and histories now, Salemina, and keep your Concordance and your umbrella constantly at hand." This I said as we stood on George IV.

Bridge and saw the ministers glooming down from the Mound in a dense Assembly fog.

As the presence of any considerable number of priests on an ocean steamer is supposed to bring rough weather, so the addition of a few hundred parsons to the population of Edinburgh is believed to induce rain,--or perhaps I should say, more rain.
Of course, when one is in perfect bodily health one can more readily resist the infection of disease.

Similarly if Scottish skies were not ready and longing to pour out rain, were not ignobly weak in holding it back, they would not be so susceptible to the depressing influences of visiting ministers.