Friend Mac Donald Part 3

"And you answered--'All right. Come on.'"

"That is true."

"Well then?"

"Well, my dear sir, it is all right: you have come--now, you may go."

Like the crow in La Fontaine's fable, Jonathan registered a vow ... but a little late.

"Ah!" cried the Aberdonian who told me the story, "Jonathan will not go back to America to tell his compatriots that he took in a Scotchman."

And his eyes gleamed with national pride as he added: "It was no harm to try."

He considered the conduct of the American quite natural, it was clear.

As for me, I thought that "All right--come on," a magnificent example of Scotch diplomacy and humour.

Donald has a still cooler head than his neighbour John Bull, and that is saying a good deal. In business, in love even, he never loses his head.

He is circ.u.mspect. He proceeds by insinuations, still oftener by negations, and that even in the most trifling matters. He does not commit himself: he _doubts_, he goes as far as to _believe_; but he will never push temerity so far as to be _perfectly sure_. Ask a Scotchman how he is. He will never reply that he is well, but that he is _no bad ava_.

I heard a Scotchman tell the butler to fill his guests' gla.s.ses in the following words:

"John, if you were to fill our gla.s.ses, we wadna be the waur for 't."

Remark to a Highlander that the weather is very warm, and he will reply:

"I don't doubt but it may be; but that's your opinion."

This manner of expressing themselves in hints and negations must have greatly sharpened the wits of the Scotch.

Here, for instance, is a delicious way of making a young girl understand that you love her, and wish to marry her. I borrow it from Dr. Ramsay's _Reminiscences_.

Donald proposes to Mary a little walk.

They go out, and in their ramble they pa.s.s through the churchyard.

Pointing with his finger to one of the graves, this lover says:

"My folk lie there, Mary; wad ye like to lie there?"

Mary took the grave hint, says the Doctor, and became his wife, but does not yet _lie there_.

Much in the same vein is an anecdote that was told me in an Edinburgh house one day at dessert:

Jamie and Janet have long loved each other, but neither has spoken word to the other of this flame.

At last Donald one day makes up his mind to break the ice.

"Janet," he says, "it must be verra sad to lie on your death bed and hae no ane to houd your han' in your last moments?"

"That is what I often say to mysel, Jamie. It must be a pleasant thing to feel that a frien's han' is there to close your ee when a' is ower."

"Ay, ay, Janet; and that is what mak's me sometimes think o' marriage.

After all, we war na made to live alone."

"For my pairt, I am no thinkin' o' matrimony. But still, the thoucht of livin' wi' a mon that I could care for is no disagreeable to me," says Janet. "Unfortunately, I have not come across him yet."

"I believe I hae met wi' the woman I loe," responds Jamie; "but I dinna ken whether she lo'es me."

"Why dinna ye ask her, Jamie?"

"Janet," says Jamie, without accompanying his words with the slightest chalorous movement, "wad ye be that woman I was speakin' of?"

"If I died before you, Jamie, I wad like your han' to close my een."

The engagement was completed with a kiss to seal the compact.

The Scot, in his quality of a man of action, talks little; all the less, perhaps, because he knows that he will have to give an account of every idle word in the Last Day.

He has reduced conversation to its simplest expression. Sometimes even he will restrain himself, much to the despair of foreigners, so far as to only p.r.o.nounce the accentuated syllable of each word. What do I say?

The syllable? He will often sound but the vowel of that syllable.

Here is a specimen of Scotch conversation, given by Dr. Ramsay:

A Scot, feeling the warp of a plaid hanging at a tailor's door, enquires:

"Oo?" (Wool?)

_Shopkeeper_--"Ay, oo." (Yes, wool.)

_Customer_--"A' oo?" (All wool?)

_Shopkeeper_--"Ay, a' oo." (Yes, all wool.)

_Customer_--"A' ae oo?" (All one wool?)

_Shopkeeper_--"Ay, a' ae oo." (Yes, all one wool.)

These are two who will not have much to fear on the Day of Judgment--eh?"

You may, perhaps, imagine that laconism could no further go.

But you are mistaken; I have something better still to give you.

Alfred Tennyson at one time often paid a visit to Thomas Carlyle at Chelsea.