“I’m a fisher too,” remarked the minister dreamily, “but a fisher of men;” the latter words were delivered with great unction. “Oh, indeed,” dryly responded the angler, “I had a keek into your creel yesterday; ye didna seem to ha’e catch’d mony.”—[Page 98.]
Taking a walk through his parish one day a minister came upon a woman seated at her door reading a book, which he at once concluded was the New Testament, but which was really Blind Harry’s Wallace. Expressing his gratification at finding her so well employed, he said it was a book which no one would ever grew weary reading.
“Atweel, sir,” said she, “I never weary o’t; I’ve read it through an’ through I dinna ken hoo aften, an’ I’m just as fond o’t yet as ever.”
“Ah, Janet,” exclaimed the enraptured divine, “I am glad to hear you say so; and how happy I would be if all my parishioners were of the same mind, and what benefit it would be to themselves, too! For oh, to think, Janet, what He did and suffered for us!”
“Deed, ay, sir, an’ that’s true,” answered Janet, “an’ to think how he soom’d through the Carron water on a cauld frosty mornin’, wi’ his braidsword in his teeth. It was awfu’!”
The Rev. Mr. M’Dougall was one of those preachers who keep their hearers awake by sheer strength of lung. Preaching one day in a strange church, he espied an old woman applying her handkerchief very frequently to her eyes. Attributing her distress to a change for the better, he kept his eye on her, and at the close of the service, found an opportunity to speak to her, and said, “You seemed to be deeply affected, my good woman, while I was preaching to-day?”
“Ay, sir, I was rale muckle affected,” she replied.
“I am truly glad of that,” quoth the minister; “and I hope the impression may be a lasting one.”
“I doot, sir,” said she, “ye’re takin’ me up wrang. I was only thinkin’ on Shoozie.”