occasion or cause, however, had come to pass by which this inherent
cross-grainedness was stirred into action, till the affair of
reseating the kirk--a measure, as I have mentioned, which gave the
best satisfaction; but it happened that, on a Saturday night, as I
was going soberly home from a meeting of the magistrates in the
clerk's chamber, I by chance recollected that I stood in need of
having my box replenished; and accordingly, in the most innocent and
harmless manner that it was possible for a man to do, I stepped into
this Mr Smeddum, the tobacconist's shop, and while he was
compounding my mixture from the two canisters that stood on his
counter, and I was in a manner doing nothing but looking at the
number of counterfeit sixpences and shillings that were nailed
thereon as an admonishment to his customers, he said to me, "So,
provost, we're to hae a new lining to the kirk. I wonder, when ye
were at it, that ye didna rather think of bigging another frae the
fundament, for I'm thinking the walls are no o' a capacity of
strength to outlast this seating."

Knowing, as I did, the tough temper of the body, I can attribute my
entering into an argument with him on the subject to nothing but
some inconsiderate infatuation; for when I said heedlessly, the
walls are very good, he threw the brass snuff-spoon with an ecstasy
in to one of the canisters, and lifting his two hands into a posture
of admiration,--cried, as if he had seen an unco -

"Good! surely, provost, ye hae na had an inspection; they're crackit
in divers places; they're shotten out wi' infirmity in others. In
short, the whole kirk, frae the coping to the fundament, is a fabric
smitten wi' a paralytic."