I have a vivid recollection of one place where a clan had turned out to receive me, and I was escorted to the platform by a band of plaided warriors, who, headed by a piper, marched me in and ranged themselves round me on the platform. When the lecture was over, one clansman met me in the anteroom, and I hardly recognized him; he was about three inches taller and six inches bigger round the chest than before the lecture, and was as a man intoxicated, though not with strong drink. “Mr. Maclaren,” he said to me, “eh, but we are a michty people,” and he slapped his chest vigorously. I hinted that we had one or two faults to modify our perfection, but he was not in a mood for such consideration. “No worth mentioning,” he said, and departed in glory. The national prayer of our people is understood to be: “Lord, give us a good conceit of ourselves,” and this prayer in my compatriot's case had been wonderfully fulfilled. Audiences vary very much in excellence, and it is difficult to understand the reason, because you may have the most delightful and the most difficult from the same class of people. Audiences are like horses--some of them so hard in the mouth and spiritless that they almost pull your arm out of the socket, and others so bright and high-spirited that you hardly feel the reins in your hands, and driving--that is to say, speaking--is a delight. The ideal audience is not one which accompanies you from beginning to end with applause and laughter, but one that takes every point and enjoys it with intelligent reserve, so that your illustrations may be condensed into allusions, and a word conveys your humour. One of my pleasures as a lecturer was to test every audience by a certain passage which divided the sheep from the goats, and I think my enjoyment was even greater when they were all goats. It came into a reading from the _Briar-Bush_ where the word “intoxication” occurs. My custom was to stop and apologise for the appearance of such a word in my book, and to explain that the word is not known in Scots speech. There are, I used to say, two reasons why a Scotsman does not employ the word. The first is that he is imperfectly acquainted with the painful circumstances to which this word is supposed to allude, and the second that a Scotsman considers that no one with a limited human intellect can know enough about the conditions of his fellow-creatures to make such a statement.