Scotland/Scots > Reminiscences of a Highland parish

THE MANSE.
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or such cheap bargains! And then how “ dear
papa” was coaxed by mamma ; and mamma again
by her daughters. Each thing was so beautiful,
so tempting, and was discovered to be so neces¬
sary ! All this time the packman was treated as
a friend. He almost always carried pipe or violin,
with which he set the youngsters a-dancing, and
was generally of the stamp of him whom Words¬
worth has made illustrious. The news gathered
on hi-s travels was as welcome to the minister as
his goods were to the minister’s family. No one
in the upper house was so vulgar as to screw
him down, but felt it due to his respectability to
give him his own price, which, in justice to those
worthy old merchants, I should state was gene¬
rally reasonable.
The manse was the grand centre to which all the
inhabitants of the parish gravitated for help and
comfort. Medicines for the sick were weighed out
from the chest yearly replenished in Edinburgh or
Glasgow. They were not given in homoeopathic
doses, for Highlanders, accustomed to things on
a large scale, would have had no faith in globules,
and faith was half their cure. Common sense and
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