A POOR IDIOT.

A natural fool, who lived in Kirkcaldy, well known over a great part of Fifeshire, as "Daft Willie Law," was a pretty regular attendant on tent preachings, at a time when these discourses were in fashion. One very warm day in summer, Willie was attending the preachings at Abbots-Hall, he being nigh-sighted, and having a short neck, stood very near the tent, gaping in the minister's face, who, greatly irritated at a number of the hearers being fast asleep from the heat of the weather, beating on the board of the tent, bawled out, "For shame, Christians, to lie sleeping there, while the glad tidings of the gospel are sounding in your ears, and here is Willie Law, a poor idiot, hearing me with great attention." — "Eh go! Sir, that's true," says Willie, "For if I hadna been a puir idiot, I wad been sleepin' too!"

—from "The Scotch Haggis; Consisting of Anecdotes, Jests, Curious and Rare Articles of Literature, with a Collection of Epitaphs and Inscriptions, Original and Selected." Anonymous, Edinburgh: D. Webster and Son, 1822.