“Many curious anecdotes of Andrew’s sarcastic wit and eccentric manners are current in the Borders. I shall for the present content myself with one specimen, illustrative of Andrew’s resemblance to his celebrated representative. The following is given as commonly related with much good humour by the late Mr. Dodds of the War Office, the person to whom it chiefly refers:—Andrew happened to be present at a fair or market somewhere in Tiviotdale (St. Boswell’s, if I mistake not), where Dodds, at that time a non-commissioned officer in his Majesty’s service, happened also to be with a military party recruiting. It was some time during the American War, when they were eagerly beating up for fresh men—to teach passive obedience to the obdurate and ill-mannered Columbians; and it was then the practice for recruiting sergeants after parading for a due space, with all the warlike pageantry of drums, trumpets, ‘glancing blades, and gay cockades,’ to declaim in heroic strains of the delights of a soldier’s life—of glory, patriotism, plunder—the prospect of promotion for the bold and the young, and his Majesty’s munificent pension for the old and the wounded, etc., etc. Dodds, who was a man of much natural talent, and whose abilities afterwards raised him to an honourable rank and independent fortune, had made one of his most brilliant speeches on this occasion. A crowd of ardent and active rustics were standing round, gaping with admiration at the imposing mien, and kindling at the heroic eloquence of the manly soldier, whom many of them had known a few years before as a rude tailor boy; the sergeant himself, already leading in idea a score of new recruits, had just concluded, in a strain of more than usual elevation, his oration in praise of the military profession, when Gemmels, who, in tattered guise, was standing close behind him, reared aloft his _meal-pocks_ on the end of his _kent_ or pike-staff, and exclaimed, with a tone and aspect of the most profound derision, ‘_Behold the end o’t!_’ The contrast was irresistible—the _beau idéal_ of Sergeant Dodds, and the ragged reality of Andrew Gemmels, were sufficiently striking; and the former, with his red-coat followers, beat a retreat in some confusion, amidst the loud and universal laughter of the surrounding multitude.”