"Aweel," says his brother, "I'se gie ye fair warning, ye had better no' ca' him up."
The recusant was one Walter Simpson, the Vulcan of the parish. Ralph, indignant at the bare idea of such an illiterate clown chopping divinity with him, determined to pose him at once with a grand leading unanswerable question. Accordingly, after putting some questions to some of the people present, he all at once, with a loud voice, cried out, "Walter Simpson!"
"Here, sir," says Walter, "are ye wanting me?"
"Attention, sir! Now Walter, can you tell me how long Adam stood in a state of innocence?"
"Ay, till he got a wife," instantly cried the blacksmith. "But," added he, "can you tell me hoo lang he stood after?"
"Sit doon, Walter," said the discomfited divine.
The Speech of a Cannibal
"Poor-man-of-mutton" is a term applied to a shoulder-of-mutton in Scotland after it has been served as a roast at dinner, and appears as a broiled bone at supper, or at the dinner next day. The Scotch Earl of B——, popularly known as Old Rag, being at an hotel in London, the landlord came in one morning to enumerate the good things in the larder. "Landlord," said the Earl of B——, "I think I could eat a morsel of poor man." This strange announcement, coupled with the extreme ugliness of his lordship, so terrified Boniface that he fled from the room and tumbled down the stairs. He supposed that the Earl, when at home, was in the habit of eating a joint of a vassal, or tenant, when his appetite was dainty.
Not "in Chains"
A Londoner was traveling on one of the Clyde steamers, and as it was passing the beautiful town of Largs, then little larger than a village, and unnoticed in his guide-book, he asked a Highland countryman, a fellow passenger, its name.