Oor ain folk times

ANSWERS TO PRAYER 229
on which many a good man and true has been nurtured
in our Scottish homes.
One favourite joke, which the good old minister
never lost a chance of repeating, was in allusion to the
number of his family. Any chance visitor coming to
the manse and seeing the great noisy troop of boys
playing about, would almost to a certainty make some
such remark as this : ' Dear me, Mr. Inglis, what a
number of fine boys you have. How many are there V
To which my father's invariable reply was : ' Well, sir,
I have nine boys, and every one of them has a sister.'
Of course we only had the one sister between us ; but
the puzzled visitor would generally manifest his
astonished commiseration by holding up his hands
and exclaiming, ' Dear, dear me ! What a family !
nine boys and nine girls.' Presently the laugh would
follow at his own expense, when the minister explained
the harmless little joke.
My mother was a woman of large faith. She was
notably a praying woman. Her faith was of that
simple unquestioning kind that is of the essence of real
personal piety. To use her own expressive phraseology,
and she always used the broad Scotch when under the
influence of deep emotion : ' Eh, laddie,' she would say,
' I jist tell the Lord fat I want. I gang straucht till
Him, an' lay a' my wants jist doon at His feet ; an' He
kens best fat's best for me, an' if it's His will I'm sure
tae get it : deed ay, laddie. The Lord's no' an ill
maister ; an' oh He's been guid tae me ; deed has He,
ay, ay ! ' Her intense earnest convictions on the sub-
ject of prayer, and her belief in direct answers to
petitions, were part of her very being. She was con-