A Restful Preacher
Dean Ramsay relates that the Earl of Lauderdale was alarmingly ill, one distressing symptom being a total absence of sleep, without which the medical man declared he could not recover. His son, who was somewhat simple, was seated under the table, and cried out, "Sen' for that preaching man frae Livingstone, for fayther aye sleeps in the kirk." One of the doctors thought the hint worth attending to, and the experiment of "getting a minister till him" succeeded, for sleep came on and the earl recovered. [[7]]
Why the Bishops Disliked the Bible
A Bishop of Dunkeld, in Scotland, before the Reformation, thanked God that he never knew what the Old and New Testaments were, affirming that he cared to know no more than his Portius and Pontifical. At a diet in Germany, one Bishop Albertus, lighting by chance upon a Bible, commenced reading; one of his colleagues asked him what book it was. "I know not," was the reply, "but this I find, that whatever I read in it, is utterly against our religion." [[9]]
The Same with a Difference
A young wit asked a man who rode about on a wretched horse: "Is that the same horse you had last year?" "Na," said the man, brandishing his whip in the interrogator's face in so emphatic a manner as to preclude further questioning; "na, but it's the same whup." [[7]]
Official Consolation and Callousness
A friend has told me of a characteristic answer given by a driver to a traveler who complained of an inconvenience. A gentleman sitting opposite my friend in the stage-coach at Berwick, complained bitterly that the cushion on which he sat was quite wet. On looking up to the roof he saw a hole through which the rain descended copiously, and at once accounted for the mischief. He called for the coachman, and in great wrath reproached him with the evil under which he suffered, and pointed to the hole which was the cause of it. All the satisfaction, however, that he got was the quiet unmoved reply, "Ay, mony a ane has complained o' that hole." [[7]]
Objecting to Scotch "Tarmes"
In early times a Scotch laird had much difficulty (as many worthy lairds have still) in meeting the claims of those two woful periods of the year called in Scotland the "tarmes." He had been employing for some time, as workman, a stranger from the south, on some house repairs. The workman rejoiced in the not uncommon name in England of "Christmas." The laird's servant, early one morning, called out at his bedroom door, in great excitement, that "Christmas had run away, and nobody knew where he had gone." He turned in his bed with the earnest ejaculation, "I only wish he had taken Whitsunday and Martinmas along with him."