. The land of heather . at the minister tokeep from disgracing herself. We were a very forlorn congregation, when attwenty-five minutes of two, the minister finished hiselucidation of the tenth of Christs joys, and we werereleased. The crowd filed out into the sunshine, andstraggled along the lane and roadway toward the vil-lage. Every one was on foot. Even from a distanceof three or four miles the people walked, whole fami-lies together. Some of them were old ladies, withtheir outer skirts caught up over their arms, steppingalong as vigorously as if they were in their teens in-stead of past t
. The land of heather . at the minister tokeep from disgracing herself. We were a very forlorn congregation, when attwenty-five minutes of two, the minister finished hiselucidation of the tenth of Christs joys, and we werereleased. The crowd filed out into the sunshine, andstraggled along the lane and roadway toward the vil-lage. Every one was on foot. Even from a distanceof three or four miles the people walked, whole fami-lies together. Some of them were old ladies, withtheir outer skirts caught up over their arms, steppingalong as vigorously as if they were in their teens in-stead of past threescore. The adherents of Auld Boblin were not asdevoted to their faith as the worshippers at the otherlocal churches, and though their numbers were de-cidedly greater, and in spite of their government in-come, they fell distinctly behind the dissenters in thesupport they gave their kirk and minister. The min-ister himself had not the character of the other lacks were moral, not intellectual, for he was by. The Sabbath and the Kirks 235 no means a dull or ignorant man. Some very ill storieswere told of him, and it was well known that both heand his wife drank at times a good deal beyond mod-eration, even if their red-faced heaviness had not con-fessed the fact. But clerical tippling is not regarded as so detrimen-tal to a pastors influence and efficiency in Scotland asit would be in America. The clergy of the dissentingkirks, however, are now nearly all total opposite is true of their fellows of the Estab-lished Kirk, and though the temperance sentiment isundoubtedly growing among them, there are those whoare far from being a credit to their calling. I wastold by one Scotch minister that not many years ago,in his boyhood home near Oban, they had an elderlyclergyman who used to get drunk every time he wentmaking parish calls. At each home whiskey was setforth for him, after the time-honored custom of theregion, and this was so much to his liking, and
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