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Updated: May 25, 2025
When the doctor placed the precious bag beside Sir George in our solitary first next morning, he laid a check beside it and was about to leave. "No, no!" said the great man. "Mrs. Macfadyen and I were on the gossip last night, and I know the whole story about you and your friend.
A've wished for a gallery at a time, but there's mair credit in findin' it oot below ay, an' pleesure tae; a' never wearied in kirk in ma life." Mrs. Macfadyen did not appreciate prodigal quotations of Scriptures, and had her suspicions of this practice. "Tak the minister o' Pitscourie noo; he's fair fozzy wi' trokin' in his gairden an' feedin' pigs, and hesna studied a sermon for thirty year.
Macfadyen, 'hesna hed muckle money spent on his eddication. "A graund field o' barley," he says, and as sure as a 'm stannin' here, it wes the haugh field o' aits. "'He 's frae Glaisgie, was all Elspeth answered, 'and by next Friday we 'll hae his name an' kirk. He said he wes up for a walk an' juist dropped in, the wratch.
His hair was fair, just touched with gold, and he wore it rather long, so that in the excitement of preaching a lock sometimes fell down on his forehead, which he would throw back with a toss of his head a gesture Mrs. Macfadyen, our critic, thought very taking.
They never suspected the sonsy motherly woman, two pews behind Donald Menzies, with her face of demure interest and general air of country simplicity. It was as well for the probationers that they had not caught the glint of those black beady eyes. "It's curious," Mrs. Macfadyen remarked to me one day, "hoo the pulpit fashions change, juist like weemen's bonnets.
His voice must not be heard in irresponsible gossip at the Kirk door, and he never condescended to the level of Mrs. MacFadyen, our recognised sermon taster, who criticised everything in the technique of the pulpit, from the number of heads in a sermon to the air with which a probationer used his pocket-handkerchief.
Macfadyen, whose judgment on sermons or anything else was seldom at fault; "an' a kind-hearted, though o' coorse he hes his faults like us a', an' he disna tribble the Kirk often.
"In the fall of 1905 I entered Syracuse University and played right tackle on the varsity team for four years and was captain of the victorious 1908 team. In the four years I never missed a scrimmage or a game. "I think that one of the hardest games I ever played in was the game against Princeton in 1908, when they had such stars as Siegling, MacFadyen, Eddie Dillon and Tibbott.
The confidence of the Glen and tributary states was unbounded, and rested partly on long experience of the doctor's resources, and partly on his hereditary connection. "His father was here afore him," Mrs. Macfadyen used to explain; "atween them they've hed the countyside for weel on tae a century; if MacLure disna understand oor constitution, wha dis, a' wud like tae ask?"
So he went on his rasping way that Sacrament morning, as when one harrows the spring earth with iron teeth, exciting himself with every sentence to fresh crudities of thought and extravagances of opposition. Discerning people, like Elspeth Macfadyen, saw the whole tragedy from beginning to end, and felt the pity of it keenly.
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