A VERY apt and appropriate quotation of Burns’ well known lines was once made by the late Rev. Dr. Gillan of Inchinnan, who was gifted with a fund of dry and ready humour. The doctor had a numerous progeny; and on one occasion, when he had gone to a country parish to preach for a friend, conversation at the tea-table in the manse turned on the subject of his family. “What a singular thing, doctor,” remarked the hostess, “that all your sons should come first, and the rest of the family be made up of girls.” “Not at all, ma’am, not at all,” rejoined the sturdy old Clergyman:
“My ‘prentice han’ I tried on man,
An’ then I made the lasses, O!’ ”