Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 10, 2025
His favourite nephew, Captain Dowbiggin, was at the front, and to one of his telegrams to the Commander-in- Chief the Minister had taken occasion to append the following carefully qualified sentence 'I recommend Dowbiggin to your notice, should you have a vacancy, and if he is fit'. Unfortunately, in those early days, it was left to the discretion of the telegraphist to compress the messages which passed through his hands; so that the result was that Lord Panmure's delicate appeal reached its destination in the laconic form of 'Look after Dowb'. The Headquarters Staff were at first extremely puzzled; they were at last extremely amused.
What really happened was different, and so absolutely conclusive that Doctor Dowbiggin gave it as his opinion "that a valuable lesson had been read to unauthorised teachers of religion."
Dowbiggin refused to certify him to a vacancy, speaking of him as "frivolous and irresponsible." The class ranged from Sarah of Drumtochty, who could cook and knew nothing about ecclesiastical affairs, to that austere damsel, Margaret Meiklewham of Pitscowrie, who had never prepared an appetising meal in her life, but might have sat as an elder in the Presbytery.
Dowbiggin, removing a vase of flowers from the dressing-table with contempt, "for they never look below the surface. Did you notice her hands, as white and smooth as a lady's? You may be sure there 's little scrubbing and brushing goes on in this manse." "How do you know, Maria?" the Doctor was weakening. "You have never been in the house before."
Dowbiggin on the use of the aorist, from which the minister-elect of Kilbogie came out an easy first; and his sermons were heard to within measurable distance of the second head by an exact quorum of the exhausted court, who were kept by the clerk sitting at the door, and preventing MacWheep escaping.
When it was announced that the University of Edinburgh had resolved to confer the degree of D.D. on him for his distinguished learning and great services to theological scholarship, Saunderson, who was delighted when Dowbiggin of Muirtown got the honour for being an ecclesiastic, would have refused it for himself had not his boys gone out in a body and compelled him to accept.
Dowbiggin refused to certify him to a vacancy, speaking of him as "frivolous and irresponsible." The class ranged from Sarah of Drumtochty, who could cook and knew nothing about ecclesiastical affairs, to that austere damsel, Margaret Meiklewham of Pitscowrie, who had never prepared an appetising meal in her life, but might have sat as an elder in the Presbytery.
After the roots had been secured and their pedigree stated Kildrummie fell back on the proceedings of Presbytery, expressing much admiration for the guidance of Doctor Dowbiggin and denouncing Saunderson as "fair dottle," in proof of which judgment Kildrummie adduced the fact that the Rabbi had allowed a very happily situated pig-sty at the Manse of Kilbogie to sink into ruin.
It gave him, therefore, a shock to sit with his brethren in the month of June when the walk through the woods had been a joy, and Muirtown lay at her fairest, and the sunshine filled the court-room, and every man had a summer air, and Doctor Dowbiggin actually wore a rose in his coat and to discover that he himself was sick of his old friends, of his work, of his people, of himself.
When Thomas John Dowbiggin was distinguishing himself after an unholy fashion by translating Cæsar into English like unto Macaulay's History, Speug used to watch him with keen interest, and employ his leisure time in arranging some little surprise to enliven the even tenor of Thomas John's life.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking