"Now, Lord, that's ridik'lous!"
If this ending of the anecdote is not authentic, I feel quite sure that none but a Scotchman could have invented it.
Donald's prayers are sermons, just as the sermons of his ministers are prayers.
In these daily litanies the Scotchman enters into the most trifling details with careful forethought: the list of favours he has received, and for which he has to return thanks; the list of the blessings he wishes for, and will certainly receive, for God cannot refuse him anything,—all this is present to his prodigious memory. He dots his i's, as we say in France; and if by chance he should happen to employ a rather far-fetched expression, he explains it to the Lord, so that there shall be no danger of misunderstanding, no pretext for not according him what he asks for—he corners Him.
Thus I was one day present at evening prayers in a Scotch family, and heard the master of the house, among a thousand other supplications, make the following:
"O Lord, give us receptivity; that is to say, O Lord, the power of receiving impressions."
The entire Scotch character is there.
What forethought! what cleverness! what a business-like talent! To explain to God the signification of the far-fetched word receptivity, so that He should not be able to say: "There is a worthy Scotchman who uses outlandish words; I do not know what it is he wants."
Would not one think that this excellent Caledonian imagined that God had been made in his image?