eadful command, _Get right with God_. To speak on Hood and his
puns with those colossal letters burning their message into your soul,
would need nerves of steel. I have not nerves of steel, and I felt
dreadfully incommoded by the bill. For the space of five minutes I might
occasionally forget it, and then, in the midst of some light and
skittish quotation, my eye would light upon it, and the verses would
come feebly and falteringly off the tongue. _Vox faucibus haesit._

SURPRISES.

My narrative would be lacking in completeness if I did not frankly
confess that I have sometimes met with humiliations of a kind to wring
the heart and call forth a sigh. In one nook of the north I stayed in
the manse of an excellent clergyman, an eloquent preacher, but austere
and extremely devout. He took the chair at the lecture, which was very
well attended. Before the meeting began I was told that a local
gentleman wished to ask me _an important question_. This was good news
for me, as I thought the inquirer might have some literary difficulty
which it would be profitable to handle in the course of my remarks. The
anxious enquirer proved to be the local hotel-keeper, who, in a deadly
earnest whisper made the following request: "You have a big meeting," he
said, "and it's not likely there will be such a number of people so near
my hotel for many a long day. _Would it be asking too much of you to
finish up about half-past nine and give the audience time to sample
some of my commodities before departing homewards?_ It's chiefly the
minister I have to fear; for if he suspects I wish to do business, he'll
prolong the vote of thanks till after the stroke of ten."

One of my compensations in wandering Scotland thorough has been the
heartfelt but rather naive way in which some of the provincials have
expressed their gratitude. "_I've paid half-a-crown for worse_," said an
old man of Ross to me, shaking me warmly by the hand and believing he
was uttering a most delicate and hyperbolical compliment. (Now, during
my remarks, I had noticed this man taking copious pinches of snuff to
enable him, as I suspected, to sit out the meeting.) Another rustic,
this time an Aberdonian, was impressed by the number of authors
mentioned and the copious citations from their works. "Heavens!" he
cried, "what a memory that man has! That's the kind of partner I should
like to have at whist: he would never forget the cards that were out."

I know not whether to