Oor ain folk times

FUNERAL GATHERINGS 191
audacious for the sophisticated tastes of modern
readers. Yet if one can only call up the peculiar
state of society which gave them birth, it will be
easily understood that they arose quite naturally, and
were a direct outcome of that easy familiarity with
scriptural subjects which was one of the most marked
characteristics of the old rural state of things. Here
for instance is one of them.
A farmer, who had been a loud professor of religion,
but whose daily conduct gave the lie to his professions,
had just died in the odour of sanctity. As he had been
a leading elder in the kirk, it seemed incumbent on the
parishioners to give him a burial befitting the high
position to which he had attained. His private char-
acter had, however, become pretty well known. Various
circumstances of little credit to his previous sanctimoni-
ousness had leaked out, and at the funeral, to which,
as in duty bound, nearly all the parishioners had come,
further disclosures had passed from mouth to mouth of
discreditable dealings and dishonest doings, and a feel-
ing of disgust had taken the place of the sympathy
with which many of the mourners had set out. The
only man who had a word of praise to say for the
deceased was another elder of like kidney with the
departed hypocrite, who quite overdid his part by
loudly vaunting the virtues of the dear departed, —
dear in more senses than one, for it soon became
known amongst the assembled farmers that they
would each and all be heavy losers when the dead
man's estate came to be administered. One young
farmer in particular, who found himself a likely
victim to the tune of some hundred pounds, felt