s as a nation from the Declaration of
Independence in 1776, I said, nor even from the landing of the Pilgrims
in 1620; nor, for that matter, from Columbus's discovery in 1492. It's
my opinion, I asserted, that some of us had been there thousands of
years before, but nobody had had the sense to discover us. We couldn't
discover ourselves,--though if we could have foreseen how the sere and
yellow nations of the earth would taunt us with youth and inexperience,
we should have had to do something desperate!"

"That theory must have been very convincing to the philosophic Scots
mind," I interjected.

"It was; even Mr. Macdonald thought it ingenious. 'And so,' I went on,
'we were alive and awake and beginning to make history when you Scots
were only bare-legged savages roaming over the hills and stealing
cattle. It was a very bad habit of yours, that cattle-stealing, and one
which you kept up too long.'

"'No worse a sin than your stealing land from the Indians,' he said.

"'Oh yes,' I answered, 'because it was a smaller one! Yours was a vice,
and ours a sin; or I mean it would have been a sin had we done it; but
in reality we didn't steal land; we just TOOK it, reserving plenty for
the Indians to play about on; and for every hunting-ground we took away
we gave them in exchange a serviceable plough, or a school, or a nice
Indian agent, or something. That was land-grabbing, if you like, but
it is a habit you Britishers have still, while we gave it up when we
reached years of discretion.'"

"This is very illuminating," I interrupted, now thoroughly wide awake,
"but it isn't my idea of a literary discussion."

"I am coming to that," she responded. "It was just at this point that,
goaded into secret fury by my innocent speech about cattle-stealing, he
began to belittle American literature, the poetry especially. Of course
he waxed eloquent about the royal line of poet-kings that had made his
country famous, and said the people who could claim Shakespeare had
reason to be the proudest nation on earth. 'Doubtless,' I said. 'But do
you mean to say that Scotland has any nearer claim upon Shakespeare than
we have? I do not now allude to the fact that in the large sense he is
the common property of the English-speaking world' (Salemina told me to
say that), 'but Shakespeare died in 1616, and the union of Scotland with
England didn't come about till 1707, nearly a century afterwards. You
really haven't anything to do with him! But