When the advertising disease first broke out in the country, a Muirtown grocer with local connections disfigured our main road with his list of prices, till in a moment of incredible audacity he affixed a cheap tea advertisement to the Parish Kirk door, and was understood to have escaped penal servitude by offering an abject apology to Doctor Davidson, and contributing ten pounds for the poor of the parish. Constable's announcements were the only mural literature afterwards allowed in the Glen, and Jock prided himself on their grandeur. They were headed in large type “Displenishing Sale,” and those imposing words, which had never been heard in the ordinary speech of the Glen within the memory of man, were supported in the body of the document by “heifers,” “fat oxen,” “draught horses,” “agricultural implements,” and “dairy apparatus.” Jock had “cereals” in one bill, but yielded to public feeling, and returned to “oats and barley” as a concession to the condition of a semieducated people. Persons, without imagination, used to carp at the grand style and demand explanations, but short of “cereals,” Jock carried the community. “What gars Jock aye say 'Displenishing Sale'?” inquired Hillocks one day, after he had given ten minutes to a bill and done the more ambitious words in syllables. “An' what dis he mean by 'heifer'? A' ken the beasts on Milton as weel as ma ain, an' a' never heard tell o' 'heifer' ootside o' the Bible.” “Ye're a doited (stupid) body, Hillocks,” said Jamie Soutar, who was always much tickled by Jock's efforts; “ye wudna surely expeck an unctioneer tae speak aboot roups, and div ye think yersel that quey soonds as weel as heifer? Gin ye hed naething but oor ain words on a post, naebody wud look twice at it, but this kind o' langidge solemnises ye an' maks ye think.” “Man Jamie, a' never thocht o' that,” for this argument touched Hillocks closely, “an' a'm no sayin' but ye 're richt. Jock 's a gabby body an' no feared o' words.”