Friend Mac Donald. O'Rell Max
– that dangerous rock to the would-be wit; he is natural, and is witty without trying to be a wit.
Yes, Donald is witty; but he possesses more solid qualities as well.
We will make acquaintance with his intellectual qualities presently.
As to his exterior – look at him: he is as strong as his own granite, and cut out for work.
A head well planted on a pair of broad shoulders; a strong-knit, sinewy frame; small, keen eyes; iron muscles; a hand that almost crushes your own as he shakes it; and large flat feet that only advance cautiously and after having tried the ground: such is Donald.
Needless to say that he generally lives to a good old age.
I never knew a Christian so confident of going to Paradise, or less eager to set out.
Why does the Scotchman succeed everywhere? Why, in Australia, New Zealand, and all the other British Colonies, do you find him landowner, director of companies, at the head of enterprises of all kinds? Again, why do you find in almost all the factories of Great Britain that the foreman is Scotch?
Ah! it is very simple.
Success is very rarely due to extraordinary circumstances, or to chance, as the social failures are fond of saying.
The Scot is economical, frugal, matter-of-fact, exact, thoroughly to be depended upon, persevering, and hard-working.
He is an early riser; when he earns but half-a-crown a day, he puts by sixpence or a shilling; he minds his own business, and does not meddle with other people's.
Add to these qualities the body that I was speaking of – a body healthy, bony, robust, and rendered impervious to fatigue by the practice of every healthful exercise – and you will understand why the Scotch succeed everywhere.
His religion teaches him to trust in God, and to rely upon his own resources – an eminently practical religion, whose device is:
Help yourself and Heaven will help you.
If a Scotchman were wrecked near an outlandish island in Oceania, I guarantee that you will find him, a few years later, installed as a landed proprietor, exacting rents and taxes from the natives.
Where the English, the Irish especially, will starve, the Scotch will exist; where the English can exist, the Scotch will dine.
The following little scene, which took place in my house, enlightened me very much as to why one finds the Scotch farming their own land in the colonies, while the Irish are doing labourers' work.
I had an Irish cook, an honest woman if ever there was one, faithful, and of a religion as sincere as it was unpractical.
The housemaid, a true-born Scotch girl, came down one morning to find the poor cook on her knees in the act of imploring Heaven to make her fire burn.
"But your wood is damp," she exclaimed; "how can ye expect it to burn? Pray, if ye will, but the Lord has a muckle to mind; and ye'd do weel to pit your wood in the oven o' nights, instead of bothering Him wi' such trifles."
"It was faith, nevertheless," said a worthy lady, to whom I told the matter.
It was idleness, thought I, or very much like it.
Doctor Norman Macleod tells how he was once in a boat, on a Highland lake, when a storm came on, which menaced him and his companions with the most serious danger. The doctor, a tall, strong man, had with him a Scotch minister, who was small and delicate. The latter addressed himself to the boatman, and, drawing his attention to the danger they were in, proposed that they should all pray.
"Na, na," said the boatman; "let the little ane gang to pray, but first the big ane maun tak' an oar, or we shall be drouned."
Donald is the most practical man on earth.
He is a man who takes life seriously, and whom nothing will divert from the road that leads to the goal.
He is a man who monopolises all the good places in this world and the next; who keeps the Commandments, and everything else worth keeping; who swears by the Bible – and as hard2 as a Norman carter; who serves God every Sabbath day and Mammon all the week; who has a talent for keeping a great many things, it is true, but especially his word, when he gives it you.
He is not a man of brilliant qualities, but he is a man of solid ones, who can only be appreciated at his true worth when you have known him some time. He does not jump at you with demonstrations of love, nor does he swear you an eternal friendship; but if you know how to win his esteem, you may rely upon him thoroughly.
He is a man who pays prompt cash, but will have the value of his money.
If ever you travel with a Scotchman from Edinburgh to London, you may observe that he does not take his eyes off the country the train goes through. He looks out of the window all the time, so as not to miss a pennyworth of the money he has paid for his place. Remark to him, as you yawn and stretch yourself, that it's a long, tiring, tiresome journey, and he will probably exclaim:
"Long, indeed, long! I should think so, sir; and so it ought to be for £2 17s. 6d.!"
I know of a Scot, who, rather than pay the toll of a bridge in Australia, takes off his coat, which he rolls and straps on his back, in order to swim across the stream.
He is not a miser; on the contrary, his generosity is well known in his own neighbourhood. He is simply an eccentric Scot, who does not see why he should pay for crossing a river that he can cross for nothing.
CHAPTER III
All Scots know how to reckon. – Rabelais in Scotland. – How Donald made two pence halfpenny by going to the Lock-up. – Difference between buying and stealing. – Scotch Honesty. – Last words of a Father to his Son. – Abraham in Scotland. – How Donald outdid Jonathan. – Circumspection, Insinuations, and Negations. – Delicious Declarations of Love. – Laconism. – Conversation reduced to its simplest Expression. – A, e, i, o, u. – A visit to Thomas Carlyle. – The Silent Academy of Hamadan. – With the Author's Compliments.
All the Scotch know how to read, write, and reckon.
Especially reckon.
The following adventure happened but the other day.
A wily Caledonian, accused of having insulted a policeman, was condemned by the Bailie of his village to pay a fine of half-a-crown, with the alternative of six days' imprisonment.
As there are few Scots who have not half-a-crown in their pockets, you will perhaps imagine that Friend Donald paid the money, glad to get out of the scrape so cheaply.
Not at all: when you are born in Scotland, you do not part with your cash without a little reflection.
So Donald reflected a moment.
Will he pay or go to jail? His heart wavers.
"I will go to jail," he exclaims, suddenly struck with a luminous idea.
Now the prison was in the chief town of his county, and it so happened that he had a little business to arrange there, but the railway fare was two shillings and eight pence halfpenny.
He passes the night in the lock-up, and in the morning is taken off by train to the prison.
Once safely there, Donald pulls half-a-crown from his purse, and demands a receipt of the governor, who has no choice but to give it him and set him at liberty. Our hero, proud as a king at the success of his plan, and the two pence halfpenny clear profit it has brought him, steers for the town and arranges his business.
Rabelais was not more cunning when he hit upon his stratagem for getting carried to Paris.
The Scotch themselves are fond of telling the following:
Dugald – "Did ye hear that Sandy McNab was ta'en up for stealin' a coo?"
Donald – "Hoot, toot, the stipit body! Could he no bocht it, and no paid for 't."
This explains why the Scotch prisons are relatively empty. Donald is often in the county
I trust to the intelligence of the reader to distinguish here between the well-bred Scot and his humbler brethren.