All the wits of old Edinburgh hit hard. Alexander Douglas, W.S., was known as “dirty Douglas.” He spoke about going to a ball, but he did not wish it reported that he attended such assemblies. “Why, Douglas,” said Patrick Robertson, “put on a well-brushed coat and a clean shirt and nobody will know you.” Andrew Johnson, a teacher of Greek and Hebrew, combined in himself many of the characteristics of Dominie Sampson. He averred that Job never was a schoolmaster, otherwise we should not have heard so much about his patience. He was on principle against the sweeping of rooms. “Cannot you let the dust lie quietly?” he would say. “Why wear out the boards rubbing them so?” He wished to marry the daughter of rich parents though he had no money himself. The father objected his want of means. “Oh dear, that is nothing,” was the confident answer. “You have plenty.” The stage occupied a very small place in the history of old Edinburgh. We know that a company from London were there in the time of James VI. It is just possible that Shakespeare may have been one of its members, and again when the Duke of York, afterwards James VII. and II., was in Edinburgh a company of English actors were at his court. Dryden has various satiric lines on their performances, in which he has some more or less passable gibes at that ancient theme, so sadly out of date in our own day, the poverty of the Scots nation. It is but scraps of stage anecdotes that you pick up. Once when a barber was shaving Henry Erskine he received the news that his wife had presented him with a son. He forthwith decreed that the child should be called Henry Erskine Johnson. The boy afterwards became an actor, and was known as the Scottish Roscius; his favourite part was young Norval—of course from _Douglas_. The audience beheld with sympathy or derision the venerable author blubbering in the boxes, and declaring that only now had his conception of the character been realised. At the time of the French Revolution one or two of the Edinburgh sympathisers attempted a poor imitation of French methods. A decent shopkeeper rejoicing to be known as “Citizen M.” had put up at “The Black Bull.” He told the servant girl to call him in time for the Lauder coach. “But mind ye,” says he, “when ye chap at the door, at no hand maun ye say ‘Mr. M., its time to rise,’ but ye maun say, ‘Ceetizan, equal rise’.” The girl had forgotten the name by the morning, and could only call out, “Equal rise.” Of one like him it was reported, according to the story of an old lady, that he “erekit a gulliteen in his back court and gulliteen’d a’ his hens on’t.”