Mr. M'Sneeshing. “Lost his leg in battle!--ha! ha! ha!--a gude joke! He means in a man-trap! I should be glad to know what business a pauper body like this has blathering abroad? Are there not almshouses, and workhouses, and hospitals, for beggars and cripples? Though I perfectly agree wi' Sandy M'Grab, Professor * of Humanity, that sic like receptacles, and the anti-Presbyterian abomination of alms-giving are only so many premiums for roguery and vay-gabondism. Let every one put his shoulder to the wheel, his nose to the grindstone, and make hay while the sun shines.” * At Oxford and Cambridge they write L.L.D.--in Scotland, L.S.D. viz. 35s. 3d. for the diploma! Mr. Bosky. But are there not many on whom the sun of prosperity never shone? Mr. M'Sneeshing. Their unthriftiness and lack of foresight alone are to blame! Mr. Bosky. Is to want a shilling, to want every virtue? Men think highly of those who rapidly rise in the world; whereas nothing rises quicker than dust, straw, and feathers! Would you provide no asylum for adversity, sickness, and old age? Mr. M'Sneeshing. Hard labour and sobriety (tossing off his heeltap of toddy) will ward off the two first, and old age and idleness (yawning and stretching himself in his chair) deserve to---- Mr. Bosky. Starve? Mr. M'Sneeshing. To have just as much--and _nae mair!_--as will keep body and soul together! Would you not _revile_, rather than _relieve_, the lazy and the improvident? Mr. Bosky. Not if they were hungry and poor! * Mr. M'Sneeshing. Nor cast them a single word of reproach? * “In the daily eating this was his custom. (Archbishop Parker's, temp. Elizabeth.) The steward, with the servants that were gentleman of the better rank, sat down at the tables in the hall on the right hand; and the almoner, with the clergy, &e., sat on the other side, where there was plenty of all sorts of provision. The daily fragments thereof did suffice to fill the bellies of a great number of poor hungry people that waited at the gate. And moreover it was the Archbishop's command to his servants, that all strangers should be receive and treated with all manner of civility and respect.” The poor and hungry fed and treated with “civility and respect!” What a poser and pill for Geordie M'Sneeshing and Professor M'Grab! Mr. Bosky. I would see that they were fed first, and then, if I reproved, my reproof should be no pharisaical diatribes. The bitterest reproaches fall short of that pain which a wounded spirit suffers in reflecting on its own errors; a lash given to the soul will provoke more than the body's most cruel torture. Mr. M'Sneeshing. Vera romantic, and in the true speerit of---- Mr. Bosky. _Charity_, I hope. Mr. M'Sneeshing. Chay-ri-ty? (putting his hand into his coat-pocket.) Mr. Bosky. Don't fumble; the word is not in M'Culloch!