The Rev. Mr. Rogers, minister of a parish in Fife, was, like many another worthy man, in sore financial straits at one period of his life. He was a widower, and probably this fact accounts for his displenished exchequer. With supreme audacity he touched the bell of a rich old maiden lady, and on entering her boudoir he bluntly admitted his lack of funds, and said, "Give me £200 and I'll marry you." She gave him the money, and for months after never saw his face. Finally she wrote asking an interview. He came, and she tartly said, "Did you not say, Mr. Rogers, that if I gave you £200, you would marry me?" "Certainly I did," said the cunning minister, "and _I'm ready to marry you whenever you produce your man: where is he_?" This anecdote shows the difficulty of being unambiguous when speaking English, and furnishes an argument for the adoption of French as the language of courtship as well as of diplomacy. The same foxy ecclesiastic wished two things, both of which his heritors flatly refused: (a) a new manse, and (b) a site with a wide prospect. Finding them intractable, he professed humility, and craved merely a species of scaffolding to buttress up one of the walls of the old manse. The heritors marvelled a little at the strange request, but, glad of being saved from the cost of a new building, authorised the buying of some sturdy joists to prop up a wall that the minister averred was off the plumb. No sooner was the buttressing timber in position than Mr. Rogers appeared with a violent complaint in the Sheriff Court, declaring that the manse was like to fall about his ears, and that the heritors had palpably admitted the danger by erecting a scaffold. The Sheriff expressed strong disapproval of the heritors' stinginess, and ordered them to get a new manse built for the minister. Now as to the site! To spite Mr. Rogers, the heritors determined to deprive him of a good view, and directed the St. Andrews builder to erect the new manse down in the valley on a broad bank by a burnside. The master-builder placed pegs and marks in the ground at the prescribed place and returned to St. Andrews, telling his workmen to proceed next day to begin the work, and mentioning that they would know the site by marks he had placed there. At cockcrow the minister was afoot, busy transferring the pegs to the summit of a lovely knoll. The tradesmen came out to the country, and looking for the site found it on the hill-top and began their work. After they had been a week or more on the walls, out from St. Andrews came the master to see how his men were progressing. He came near a complete collapse when he saw his men on the hill instead of in the valley. He spoke winged words to them, but it was too late. In such fashion did Mr. Rogers outwit his heritors. I regret that no literary relics of this acute divine are to be had. He seems to have been in his way a kind of Higher Critic judging from a remark he made on the Ark: