the
speerit--the mair if the edge be a fine razor edge, an' no the edge o' a
whittle. I mind about fifty years ago, when I was a slip o' a
callant,"----

"Losh, John!" exclaimed one of the lads, "hae ye been fechtin wi' the
cats? sic a scrapit face!"

"Wheesht," said Ferguson; "we owe the illustration to that, but dinna
interrupt the story."

"Fifty years ago, when I was a slip o' a callant," continued John, "unco
curious, an' fond o' kennin everything, as callants will be,"----

"Hoot, John," said one of the students, interrupting him, "can ye no cut
short, man? Rob promised last Saturday to gie us, 'Fie, let us a' to the
bridal,' an' ye see the ale an' the nicht's baith wearin' dune."

"The song, Rob, the song!" exclaimed half a dozen voices at once; and
John's story was lost in the clamour.

"Nay, now," said the good-natured poet, "that's less than kind; the auld
man's stories are aye worth the hearing, an' he can relish the
auld-warld fisher-sang wi' the best o' ye. But we maun hae the story
yet."

He struck up the old Scotch ditty, "Fie let us a' to the bridal," which
he sung with great power and brilliancy; for his voice was a richly
modulated one, and there was a fulness of meaning imparted to the words
which wonderfully heightened the effect. "How strange it is," he
remarked to me when he had finished, "that our English neighbours deny
us humour! The songs of no country equal our Scotch ones in that
quality. Are you acquainted with 'The Guidwife of Auchtermuchty?'"

"Well," I replied; "but so are not the English. It strikes me that, with
the exception of Smollet's novels, all our Scotch humour is locked up in
our native tongue. No man can employ in works of humour any language of
which he is not a thorough master; and few of our Scotch writers, with
all their elegance, have attained the necessary command of that
colloquial English which Addison and Swift employed when they were
merry."

"A braw redd delivery," said John, addressing me. "Are ye gaun to be a
minister tae?"

"Not quite sure yet," I replied.

"Ah," rejoined the old man, "'twas better for the Kirk when the minister
just made himsel ready for it, an' then waited till he kent whether it
wanted him. There's young Rob Ferguson beside you,"--

"Setting oot for the Kirk," said the young poet, interrupting him, "an'
yet drinkin' ale on Saturday at e'en wi' old John Hogg."

"Weel, weel, laddie, it's easier for the best o' us to find fault wi