Part 39 (2/2)

asked a grocer of a brother tradesman.

”Weel,” answered Jamie, ”I canna say muckle about it, but I ken this--I hae gotten in a gude wheen bawbees that I had given up lang syne as bad debts.”

=Lights and Livers=

Lord c.o.c.kburn, when at the bar, was pleading in a steamboat collision case. The case turned on the fact of one of the steamers carrying no lights, which was the cause of the accident. c.o.c.kburn insisting on this, wound up his eloquent argument with this remark: ”In fact, gentlemen, had there been more _lights_, there would have been more _livers_.”

=Both Short=

”Ye're unco' short the day, Saunders, surely,” said an undersized student to a Glasgow bookseller, one morning, when the latter was in an irritable mood.

”Od, man,” was the retort, ”ye may haud your tongue; ye're no' sae lang yersel'.”

=His Own, With ”Interest”=

”Coming from h--l, Lauchlan?” quoth a shepherd, proceeding on Sacrament Sunday to the Free Church, and meeting a friend coming from the Church of the Establishment.

”Better nor going to it, Rory,” retorted Lauchlan, as he pa.s.sed on.

=”The Spigot's Oot”=

Lord Airlie remarked to one of his tenants that it was a very wet season.

”Indeed, my lord,” replied the man, ”I think the spigot's oot a'thegither.”

=Looking After Himself=

A canny man, who had accepted the office of elder because some wag had made him believe that the remuneration was a sixpence each Sunday and a boll of meal on New Year's Day, officially carried round the ladle each Sunday after service. When the year expired he claimed the meal, but was told that he had been hoaxed.

”It may be sae wi' the meal,” he replied, coolly, ”but I took care o'

the saxpence mysel'.”

=An Epitaph to Order=

The Rev. Dr. M'Culloch, minister of Bothwell at the end of last century, was a man of sterling independence and great self-decision. To a friend--Rev. Mr. Brisbane--he one day said, ”You must write my epitaph if you survive me.”

”I will do that,” said Mr. Brisbane; ”and you shall have it at once, doctor.”

Next morning he received the following:

”Here lies, interred beneath this sod, That sycophantish man of G.o.d, Who taught an easy way to heaven, Which to the rich was always given; If he get in, he'll look and stare To find some out that he put there.”

=A Variety Entertainment=

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