A Scottish clergyman, being one day engaged in visiting some member of his flock, came to the door of a house where his gentle tapping could not be heard for the noise of contention inside. After waiting a little, he opened the door and walked in, saying with an authoritative voice, "I should like to know who is the head of this house?" "Weel, sir," said the husband and father, "if ye sit doon a wee, we'll may be able to tell ye, for we're just trying to settle that point." =Patience= When Lord Chesterfield was one day at Newcastle House, the Duke happened to be particularly busy, so the Earl was requested to sit down in an anteroom. "Garnet upon Job," a book dedicated to the Duke, happened to lie in the window; and his Grace, upon entering found the Earl so busily engaged in reading, that he asked how he liked the commentary. "In any other place," replied Chesterfield, "I should not think much of it; but there is such great propriety in putting a volume upon patience in the room where every visitor has to wait for your Grace, that here it must be considered as one of the best books in the world." =Preaching and Practice= Dr. Channing had a brother, a physician, and at one time they both lived in Boston. One day, a countryman in search of a _divine_, knocked at the _doctor's_ door, when the following dialogue ensued: "Does Mr. Channing live here?" "Yes, sir." "Can I see him?" "I am he." "Who--you?" "Yes, sir." "You must have altered considerably since I heard you preach!" "Oh, I see your mistake now. It's my brother who _preaches_. I _practice_." =Johnson's Dictionary= When Dr. Johnson had completed his dictionary, which had quite exhausted the patience of Mr. Andrew Millar, his bookseller, the latter acknowledged the receipt of the last sheet, in the following note: "Andrew Millar sends his compliments to Mr. Samuel Johnson with the money for the last sheet of the copy of the dictionary, and thanks God he has done with him." To this rude note the doctor returned the following smart answer: "Samuel Johnson returns his compliments to Mr. Andrew Millar, and is very glad to find (as he does by his note), that Andrew Millar has the grace to thank God for anything." --Percy's "Anecdotes." =The Boy Kipling= Rudyard Kipling's keen and sympathetic understanding of all the diversified and picturesque varieties of human nature found in British India, is too well recognized as part of his power to need assertion; but a little anecdote which his mother remembers of his boyhood is not without a pretty allegorical significance. It was at Nasik, on the Dekhan plain, not far from Bombay, when the little fellow, trudging over the ploughed field, with his hand in that of the native husbandman, called back to her in the Hindustani, which was as familiar to him as English, "Good-by, this is my brother!" --Professor Norton, in a biographical sketch.