A lawyer in an Edinburgh court occupied the whole day with a speech which was anything but interesting to his auditors.
Some one, who had left the court-room and returned again after the interval of some hours, finding the same harangue going on, said to Lord Cockburn, "Is not H---- taking up a great deal of time?"
"Time?" said Cockburn; "he has long ago exhausted time, and encroached upon eternity."
A friend of mine used to tell a story of an honest builder's views of church differences, which was very amusing and quaintly professional. An English gentleman who had arrived in a Scottish county town, was walking about to examine various objects which presented themselves, and observed two rather handsome places of worship in the course of erection nearly opposite each other. He addressed a person, who happened to be the contractor for the chapels, and asked, "What was the difference between these two places of worship which was springing up so close to each other?" meaning, of course, the difference of the theological tenets of the two congregations.
The contractor, who thought only of architectural differences, innocently replied, "There may be a difference of sax feet in length, but there's no' aboon a few inches in breadth."
Would that all religious differences could be brought within so narrow a compass. [7]
A Scotch minister was asked if he was not very much exhausted after preaching three hours. "Oh, no," he replied; "but it would have done you good to see how worried the people were."
A landed proprietor in the small county of Rutland became very intimate with the Duke of Argyle, to whom, in the plenitude of his friendship, he said: "How I wish your estate were in my county!" Upon which the duke replied, "I'm thinking, if it were, there would be _no room for yours_."
The Rev. Adam Wadderstone, minister in Bathgate, was an excellent man and as excellent a curler, who died in 1780. Late one Saturday night one of his elders received a challenge from the people of Shotts to the curlers of Bathgate to meet them early on Monday morning; and after tossing about half the night at a loss how to convey the pleasing news to the minister, he determined to tell him before he entered the pulpit.