obliged to be a guard of soldiers to protect the presbytery. Dirt was
flung upon us as we passed, and the finger of scorn held out to me. But
I endured it with a resigned spirit, compassionating their wilfulness
and blindness.

The kirk door was nailed up and we were obligated to go in by the
window, making the Lord's house like an inn on a fair-day with their
grievous yelly hooing. Thomas Thorl, the weaver, a pious zealot, got up
at the time of the induction and protested, and said, "Verily, verily, I
say unto you, he that entereth not by the door of the sheepfold, but
climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber."

When the laying on of the hands upon me was adoing, Mr. Given, minister
of Lugton, a jocose man, who could not get near, stretched out his staff
and touched my head, saying, to the great diversion of the rest, "This
will do well enough--timber to timber."

After the ceremony we went to the manse, and there had an excellent
dinner. Although my people received me in this unruly manner, I was
resolved to cultivate civility among them; and next morning I began a
round of visitations. But, oh! it was a steep brae to climb. The doors
in some places were barred against me; in others the bairns ran crying
to their mothers, "Here's the feckless Mess-John." But Thomas Thorl
received me kindly, and said that this early visitation was a symptom of
grace, and that not to condemn me without trial he and some neighbours
would be at the kirk at the next Lord's day, so that I would not have to
preach just to the bare walls and the laird's family.

As to Mrs. Malcolm, she was the widow of a Clyde shipmaster that was
lost at sea with his vessel. A genty body, she never changed her widow's
weeds, and span frae morning tae nicht to keep her bairns and herself.
When her daughter Effie was ill, I called on her in a sympathising way,
and offered her some assistance frae the Session, but she refused help
out of the poor's-box, as it might be hereafter cast up to her bairns.

It was in the year 1761 that the great smuggling trade corrupted the
west coast. Tea was going like chaff, and brandy like well-water. There
was nothing minded but the riding of cadgers by day and excisemen by
night, and battles between the smugglers and the king's men, both by sea
and land; continual drunkenness and debauchery, and our Session had an
awful time o't.

I did all that was in my power to keep my people from the contagion. I
p