The only thing I remember to have heard connected with this period of my father's life, was his anecdotes of Paplay's eccentricities, which were numerous--some of them personal, and some of them the peculiarities of the old school of clergy in Scotland. He was a pious and orthodox man; but withal had a tincture of the Covenanter about him, blended with the aristocratic and chivalrous feeling of a country gentleman of old family. In the troubled times, about the years 1745-6, he was a staunch Whig; and so very decided in his politics, that, when "Prince Charlie's men" had the ascendancy in Scotland, he was either in arms or in hiding; and when he ventured to preach, he wore his sword in the pulpit, and a blue coat, girt with a belt, in which a pair of pistols were hung--more like a man of war than a preacher of peace! Even after the defeat at Culloden, the Jacobitism of the north was so strong, and Paplay was so obnoxious, by reason of his vehement preaching against popery, and prelacy, and the Pretender, that he continued long after to wear his sword (in the pulpit and elsewhere), which was rather a formidable concern to the nonjurors about him, in the hand of a brave and athletic champion of true Whiggery. He assigned three reasons for wearing his sword after it seemed to some of his friends to be unnecessary:--"First, because I am a gentleman; secondly, because I can use it; and, thirdly, because, if you doubt, you may try." Among some of his oddities, he had a great admiration of a well-spring, a white calf, and a bonny lass; and he never passed any of them in his way without doing them homage. Though travelling on horseback, he would dismount to bathe his feet in a limpid stream, as it gushed from the earth, or to caress a white calf, or to salute a female--all which fantasies were united with the most primitive innocence. And he never ate a meal, even in his own house, or when he was a refugee in a hay stack or kiln barn, without exacting from his wife and friends the most urgent _pressing_. It was under the auspices of this warlike and singular apostle that my father was ushered into the sacred office of a minister of the gospel. He preached his first sermon in the church of his native parish; and, according to the fashion of the times, at the close of the service, the parish minister publicly criticised the discourses of the day. The young preacher, in this instance, found favour in Paplay's eyes; and his testimony in favour of the _plant_ which had sprung up among them was so emphatic, and rendered so piquant by his odd figures of speech, that William Douglas was long distinguished among his friends and neighbours by the familiar designation of _Paplay's Plant_.