--and the weaker his character he should be the
more careful--must always approach children with caution if he hopes to
come out of the interview with his reputation unscathed. I have heard or
read of a member of the cloth--a supreme egoist--who was visiting at a
house when but the mother and her little girl--a mere child--were at
home. As the self-esteemed great man was holding the mother in
conversation, he noticed with pride that the child, who reposed on the
hearthrug with a school-slate tilted on her knee, was making furtive
glances up at his face, and returning her attention regularly to the
slate, on which she kept scrawling with a pencil. When at length she
stopped and looked serious, "Well, my dear," he exclaimed, "have you
been trying to draw my portrait?" She did not reply, "Come," he
continued, coaxingly, "you must let me see it." "Oh," interposed the
proud mother, "she's awfu' clever at the drawin'." This made the
minister still more eager to see the work, and he repeated his request
for an exposure; but the child clutched the slate only more tightly to
her breast and did not look up. "She's aye sae shy, ye ken," interceded
the mother, as she reached her hand to procure the work of art by main
force. It was then the little one found her tongue, and she
exclaimed--"Oh, it wasna very like him, and I just put a tail till't,
and ca'd it a doggie." The _denouement_ leaves nothing to be desired.

Dean Ramsay, to whom his country owes so much for the elucidation of its
characteristics, tells humorously of the elder of a kirk having found a
little boy and his sister playing marbles on Sunday, and put his reproof
not at all in judicious form by exclaiming--"Boy, do you know where
children go who play marbles on the Sabbath-day?" Not in judicious form,
truly, for the boy replied, "Ay, they gang doun to the field by the
water below the brig." "No," roared out the elder, "they go to hell, and
are burned." Worse than ever--for the elder--for the little fellow,
really shocked, now called to his sister, "Come awa', Jeanie, here's a
man swearin' awfu'."

"Among the lower orders in Scotland humour is found, occasionally, very
rich in mere children," observes the Dean, "and I recollect a remarkable
illustration of this early native humour occurring in a family in
Forfarshire, where I used in former days to be very intimate. A wretched
woman, who used to traverse the country as a beggar or tramp, left a
poor half-starved lit