write. He went without many a dinner in order to buy a
book.

The Coat of Many Colours and Silva Robbie were two street preachers who
gave the Thrums ministers some work. They occasionally appeared at the
club. The Coat of Many Colours was so called because he wore a garment
consisting of patches of cloth of various colours sewed together. It
hung down to his heels. He may have been cracked rather than inspired,
but he was a power in the square where he preached, the women declaring
that he was gifted by God. An awe filled even the men, when he
admonished them for using strong language, for at such a time he would
remind them of the woe which fell upon Tibbie Mason. Tibbie had been
notorious in her day for evil-speaking, especially for her free use of
the word handless, which she flung a hundred times in a week at her
man, and even at her old mother. Her punishment was to have a son born
without hands. The Coat of Many Colours also told of the liar who
exclaimed, "If this is not gospel true may I stand here for ever," and
who is standing on that spot still, only nobody knows where it is.
George Wishart was the Coat's hero, and often he has told in the Square
how Wishart saved Dundee. It was the time when the plague lay over
Scotland, and in Dundee they saw it approaching from the West in the
form of a great black cloud. They fell on their knees and prayed,
crying to the cloud to pass them by, and while they prayed it came
nearer. Then they looked around for the most holy man among them, to
intervene with God on their behalf. All eyes turned to George Wishart,
and he stood up, stretching his arms to the cloud and prayed, and it
rolled back. Thus Dundee was saved from the plague, but when Wishart
ended his prayer he was alone, for the people had all returned to their
homes. Less of a genuine man than the Coat of Many Colours was Silva
Robbie, who had horrid fits of laughing in the middle of his prayers,
and even fell in a paroxysm of laughter from the chair on which he
stood. In the club he said things not to be borne, though logical up
to a certain point.

Tammas Haggart was the most sarcastic member of the club, being
celebrated for his sarcasm far and wide. It was a remarkable thing
about him, often spoken of, that if you went to Tammas with a stranger
and asked him to say a sarcastic thing that the man might take away as
a specimen, he could not do it. "Na, na," Tammas would say, after a
few trials