rested on driving a helpless multitude into the jaws of famine. He suffered
them to pass unmolested; and when afterwards reproached with the delay
which this produced in the siege, he feelingly said, "I had rather be the
preserver of one innocent person, than be the master of a hundred Cajetas."


Provost Drummond.--About the middle of last century, George Drummond was
provost or chief magistrate of Edinburgh, and renowned for his humane
disposition. He was one day coming into the town by the suburb called the
West Port, when he saw a funeral procession leaving the door of a humble
dwelling, and setting out for the churchyard. The only persons composing
the funeral company were four poor-looking old men, seemingly common
beggars, one at each end of a pole carrying the coffin, and none to relieve
them; there was not a single attendant. The provost at once saw that it
must be a beggar's funeral, and he went forward to the old men, saying to
them, "Since this poor creature now deceased has no friends to follow his
remains to the grave, I will perform that melancholy office myself." He
then took his place at the head of the coffin. They had not gone far, till
they met two gentlemen who were acquainted with the provost, and they asked
him what he was doing there. He told them that he was going to the
interment of a poor friendless mendicant, as there were none else to do it;
so they turned and accompanied him. Others joined in the same manner, and
at last there was a respectable company at the grave. "Now," said the
kind-hearted provost, "I will lay the old man's head in the grave," which
he accordingly did, and afterwards saw the burial completed in a decent
manner. When the solemnity was over, he asked if the deceased had left a
wife or family, and learned that he had left a wife, an old woman, in a
state of perfect destitution. "Well, then, gentlemen," said the provost,
addressing those around him, "we met in rather a singular manner, and we
cannot part without doing something creditable for the benefit of the