Old wives grumbled by their hearths when he did not look in to despair of their salvation.

He told the maidens of his congregation not to make an idol of him.

His session saw him (from behind a haystack) in conversation with a strange woman, and asked grimly if he remembered that he had a wife.

Twenty were his years when he came to Thrums, and on the very first Sabbath he knocked a board out of the pulpit.

Before beginning his trial sermon he handed down the big Bible to the precentor, to give his arms freer swing.