CHAPTER IV--THE SCOT ABROAD
A few pages back, I wrote that a man belonged, in these days, to a
variety of countries; but the old land is still the true love, the
others are but pleasant infidelities. Scotland is indefinable; it
has no unity except upon the map. Two languages, many dialects,
innumerable forms of piety, and countless local patriotisms and
prejudices, part us among ourselves more widely than the extreme
east and west of that great continent of America. When I am at
home, I feel a man from Glasgow to be something like a rival, a man
from Barra to be more than half a foreigner. Yet let us meet in
some far country, and, whether we hail from the braes of Manor or
the braes of Mar, some ready-made affection joins us on the
instant. It is not race. Look at us. One is Norse, one Celtic,
and another Saxon. It is not community of tongue. We have it not
among ourselves; and we have it almost to perfection, with English,
or Irish, or American. It is no tie of faith, for we detest each
other's errors. And yet somewhere, deep down in the heart of each
one of us, something yearns for the old land, and the old kindly
people.
Of all mysteries of the human heart, this is perhaps the most
inscrutable. There is no special loveliness in that gray country,
with its rainy, sea-beat archipelago; its fields of dark mountains;
its unsightly places, black with coal; its treeless, sour,
unfriendly looking corn-lands; its quaint, gray, castled city,
where the bells clash of a Sunday, and the wind squalls, and the
salt showers fly and beat. I do not even know if I desire to live
there; but let me hear, in some far land, a kindred voice sing out,
"Oh, why left I my hame?" and it seems at once as if no beauty
under the kind heavens, and no society of the wise and good, can
repay me for my absence from my country. And though I think I
would rather die elsewhere, yet in my heart of hearts I long to be
buried among good Scots clods. I will say it fairly, 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 Scotch.
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 more 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 quiver.
"You're a Scotchman, sir?" he said gravely. "So am I; I come from
Aberdeen. This is my card," presenting me with a piece of
pasteboard which he had raked out of some gutter in the period of
the rains. "I was just examining this palm," he continued,
indicating the misbegotten plant before our door, "which is the
largest spAcimen I have yet observed in Califoarnia."
There were four or five larger within sight. But where was the use
of argument? He produced a tape-line, made me help him to measure
the tree at the level of the ground, and entered the figures in a
large and filthy pocket-book, all with the gravity of Solomon. He
then thanked me profusely, remarking that such little services were
due between countrymen; shook hands with me, "for add lang syne,"
as he said; and took himself solemnly away, radiating dirt and
humbug as he went.
A month or two after this encounter of mine, there came a Scot to
Sacramento--perhaps from Aberdeen. Anyway, there never was any one
more Scotch in this wide world. He could sing and dance, and
drink, I presume; and he played the pipes with vigour and success.
All the Scotch in Sacramento became infatuated with him, and spent
their spare time and money, driving him about in an open cab,
between drinks, while he blew himself scarlet at the pipes. This
is a very sad story. After he had borrowed money from every one,
he and his pipes suddenly disappeared from Sacramento, and when I
last heard, the police were looking for him.
I cannot say how this story amused me, when I felt myself so
thoroughly ripe on both sides to be duped in the same way.
It is at least a curious thing, to conclude, that the races which
wander widest, Jews and Scotch, should be the most clannish in the
world. But perhaps these two are cause and effect: "For ye were
strangers in the land of Egypt."
