FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155  
156   157   158   159   160   161   162   163   164   165   166   167   168   169   170   171   172   173   174   175   176   177   178   179   180   >>   >|  
it grows on me with every year: there are no stars so lovely as Edinburgh street-lamps. When I forget thee, auld Reekie, may my right hand forget its cunning! The happiest lot on earth is to be born a Scotchman. You must pay for it in many ways, as for all other advantages on earth. You have to learn the paraphrases and the shorter catechism; you generally take to drink; your youth, as far as I can find out, is a time of louder war against society, of more outcry and tears and turmoil, than if you had been born, for instance, in England. But somehow life is warmer and closer; the hearth burns more redly; the lights of home shine softer on the rainy street; the very names, endeared in verse and music, cling nearer round our hearts. An Englishman may meet an Englishman to-morrow, upon Chimborazo, and neither of them care; but when the Scotch wine-grower told me of Mons Meg, it was like magic. "From the dim shieling on the misty island Mountains divide us, and a world of seas; Yet still our hearts are true, our hearts are Highland, And we, in dreams, behold the Hebrides." And, Highland and Lowland, all our hearts are Scottish. Only a few days after I had seen M'Eckron, a message reached me in my cottage. It was a Scotchman who had come down a long way from the hills to market. He had heard there was a countryman in Calistoga, and came round to the hotel to see him. We said a few words to each other; we had not much to say--should never have seen each other had we stayed at home, separated alike in space and in society; and then we shook hands, and he went his way again to his ranche among the hills, and that was all. Another Scotchman there was, a resident, who for the mere love of the common country, douce, serious, religious man, drove me all about the valley, and took as much interest in me as if I had been his son: more, perhaps; for the son has faults too keenly felt, while the abstract countryman is perfect--like a whiff of peats. And there was yet another. Upon him I came suddenly, as he was calmly entering my cottage, his mind quite evidently bent on plunder: a man of about fifty, filthy, ragged, roguish, with a chimney-pot hat and a tail coat, and a pursing of his mouth that might have been envied by an elder of the kirk. He had just such a face as I have seen a dozen times behind the plate. "Hullo, sir!" I cried. "Where are you going?" He turned round without a
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155  
156   157   158   159   160   161   162   163   164   165   166   167   168   169   170   171   172   173   174   175   176   177   178   179   180   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
hearts
 

Scotchman

 

society

 

Englishman

 

cottage

 
street
 
countryman
 

forget

 
Highland
 

Calistoga


common

 

Another

 
resident
 

separated

 
stayed
 

ranche

 
market
 
country
 

pursing

 

envied


roguish

 

ragged

 

chimney

 

turned

 

filthy

 

faults

 

keenly

 

abstract

 

interest

 

religious


valley

 
perfect
 

evidently

 

plunder

 

entering

 
calmly
 

suddenly

 
Mountains
 

catechism

 
shorter

generally
 

louder

 
warmer
 
closer
 

England

 

instance

 
outcry
 

turmoil

 
paraphrases
 

Edinburgh