“’Deed, simply eneuch, an’ I’ll tell ye hoo. Just as soon as the hinmost psalm was finished, ye see, I gaed aff as usual an’ opened first the West door, and syne ran round and opened the East door, and as I was comin’ back round the kirk again, wha should I meet but Newmains, an’ twa or three ither o’ the farmers, an’ by the way they were lauchin’ an’ nudgin’ ane anither wi’ their elbucks, I kent fine what they were ettlin’ to say, so I tak’s the first word wi’ them, an’ says I, ‘Weel, lads,’ says I, ‘ye canna say that yon was an auld ane ye got the day, for it’s no abune sax weeks since ye got it afore.’ An’ I think I got the better o’ them, sir. An’ that’s hoo I canna help lauchin’.”
The beadle of a northern city kirk was a pavior to trade, and the minister with whom he was regularly “yokit” every Sabbath coming up one day to where John was busily engaged laying causey, was struck with a fine simile, as he thought, and said, “John, you and I toil daily with the same object in view, namely, to mend the ways of our fellow-men. But, I am afraid, you make much better progress than I do.”
“Ay,” replied the pavior-beadle, dryly, “but maybe if ye was as muckle on your knees at your wark as I am, sir, you would come better speed.”
A capital rejoinder.
One of the beadle’s weaknesses is the “dram,” as has been already hinted here, and as this must be taken on the sly, his defence must be strong, even though unscrupulous. Alexander M’Laughlan, a Blairgowrie beadle, had contracted a habit of tippling, and entering the Session-house one morning with the evidence of guilt in his breath, the minister deemed the occasion a fitting one on which to administer a reproof, and said—
“Saunders, I much fear that the bottle has become——”
“Aye, sir,” interrupted the officer, “I was just about to remark that there was surely a smell o’ drink amang’s!”
In another case of the same kind, the defence was less equivocal.
“You have been drinking again, John,” said the minister. “Why, John, you should really become a teetotaler.”