"Mother, if you do," interposed the old man, "I'll put my foot down on your convention of retired taychers at Owen Sound." But mother paid no attention to the threat.
"He asked if I knew the story of Mahomet and the mountain, and how Mahomet said, if the mountain will not come to the prophet, the prophet must go to the mountain. So, said he, you are the prophet and must come to my house under the mountain, and be a Hill yourself. It was so funny and clever that I came; besides I was glad to change the name Prophet. People were never tired making the most ridiculous plays upon it. The old Scotch schoolmistress, who taught me partly, was named Miss Lawson, so they called us Profit and Loss; and they pronounced my Christian name as if it was Purses, and nicknamed me Property, and took terrible liberties with my nomenclature." At this the whole company laughed heartily, after which the dominie said: "I see your pipe is out, Corry; you might favour our kind friends with a song." The lawyer did not know what to sing, but took his inspiration, finally, from Wilkinson's last question, and sang the ballad of William Rufus, as far as:—
Men called him William Rufus because of his red beard,
A proud and naughty king he was, and greatly to be feared;
But an arrow from a cross-bow, sirs, hit him in the middell,
And, instead of a royal stag that day, a king of England fell.
Then the correct ear and literary sense of the dominie were offended, and he opened out on his friend.
"I think, Corry, that you might at least have saved our generous hosts the infliction of your wretched travesties. The third line, Mrs Hill, is really:—
But an arrow from a cross-bow, sirs, the fiercest pride can quell.
There is nothing so vulgar as hitting in the verse, and your ear for poetry must tell you that middle cannot rhyme with fell, even if it were not a piece of the most Gothic barbarity. Thus a fine English song, such as I love to hear, is murdered."