Chapter V: Part 5

It is a great thing to be able to speak the language and not have to rely so much on holding up your fingers and making faces. We have been for so many weeks among the Dutch and the French that it is a positive pleasure to just listen to the conversation around us and know that we can understand. A little knowledge of a foreign tongue leads to many mistakes. I heard a Frenchman in a London hotel giving an account of his day’s experience to an English lady. Among other things he said he went to a linen store and left an order for table linen, and added, “and I will have my entrails on it.” Of course he meant his initials, but he had been careless with his dictionary. And yet it is very hard for us to understand the ordinary London cab-driver or workman. His accent is so different that it is almost like another language. And even an educated Englishman will give you a direction like this: “Go to the next turning on the left, bear a bit to the right until you get to the top of the street.” Which means in American go to the next corner, turn to the left, then a little to the right to the end of the street. I never can understand why the English people generally murder their language as they do. But perhaps I am like the little American girl I met in Germany. She had learned German at home, and I asked her how she got along in Berlin. “Not very well,” she said, “they talk such bad German.”

* * * * *

The transportation in the center of London is confined entirely to busses and cabs. There is too much traffic and the streets are too narrow for street railways. In the outer parts of the city a number of street cars, or “trams” as they are called, are operated. Every bus and every tram has seats on the roof, and they are the choice seats on the vehicle. From one of these top seats is the place to see London, and the traveler has the advantage of not only being able to note the sights on the pavement and the walks, but he can look in the second-story windows and see how people live. There are no great skyscrapers in London, the business houses usually being six stories or less in height. The residences are nearly always three or four stories, and either built flush to the street, with a garden or court in the rear, or back from the street and the yard inclosed by a high stone wall. The Englishman goes on the old principle that an Englishman’s house is his castle, and puts up high walls between himself and his neighbors. A front porch, or an open lawn in front of a private house, would be regarded as freakish or an evidence of insanity. On the other hand, there are many public parks and pretty green squares in London which are breathing-spots for the congestion of humanity within this great city.

The “City of London” which has a Lord Mayor is the little old city which is the hub of the whole business. It is the section of the banks and the great institutions of finance, and is about the size of Hutchinson, but a solid mass of stone structures and narrow streets. Only about 30,000 people reside there. The London of the present is London County, covers about 900 square miles and is therefore about the size of Reno county. That is the area in which 8,000,000 people live. It is governed by a County Council, elected by the taxpayers, which is a very active body and is doing much to improve the conditions. London has fine water and visitors are even urged to drink it--something new in Europe. Taxes, or “rates” as they are called, are high, and include everything from real estate and personal to income tax and a stamp tax on receipts and drafts. The great problem of improving a city is to get the money without distressing the people. It requires large sums to make and care for parks, streets, schools, paving, water-works, light, and the other things that the city must have in order to be modern, healthful, and comfortable. The citizens everywhere groan under the weight of taxation, and yet they should not if the money is properly spent. These streets, police, schools, fire departments and such are as necessary as the walls of our homes, which also require money to build and maintain. The certainty of death and taxes is proverbial. There is no way to avoid the former and the only way to dodge taxes is to go to an uninhabited island and live by yourself. And then if some other individual comes along, the first thing the original tax-dodger will do is to tax the other fellow.

* * * * *

The ordinary English home has the front room of the house for the dining-room. The “drawing-room” is at the rear and the kitchen quite a distance from the dining-room. The drawing-room is used only on special occasions and the dining-room is the family living-room. The English are great home-makers, and their houses are always well furnished and look as if folks lived there. On the continent the fashion is to go out for the evening meal to restaurant or café, but the Englishman comes home and stays there. The table is spread with the family and intimate friends around, and supper is served at 8 o’clock or later. You see the Englishman has already had three meals--breakfast, luncheon, and tea; so the evening meal is late. To me the most attractive part of English life is that in the home. The Englishman gathers his family about him, pulls down the blinds, reads his newspaper and is in his castle, which no lord or duke can enter without his consent. This simple virtue of home-living is rare in Europe, and in the family circle which gathers at the table and at the altar the young Englishman gets the habit of thought and manner which marks him wherever he goes, and which has made his country the greatest of all the nations.

The North of Ireland

LONDONDERRY, IRELAND, September 8.

Crossing the Irish Sea from Fishguard in southern Wales to Rosslare in southern Ireland, I met a jolly Irishman from Cork. When I told him I was going to the North of Ireland he remonstrated. “Don’t do it, mon. Every Irishman up there is a Scotchman!” But I had seen the beautiful South of Ireland and we had to come to Londonderry to take the ship for home, so the warning of the Corker was in vain. I found that he was right. Soon after we left Dublin we came upon linen factories and distilleries and Presbyterian churches, people too busy to jolly a stranger, and cannily seeking the surest way to a sixpence. In the South of Ireland no one is too busy to talk with the stranger and to tell him all the legendary lore of the country, while in the North one shrinks from stopping the busy worker, even to ask him which way is straight up. The people of both ends of Ireland are pleasant and the American dollar is greatly admired, but the process of extracting it is painless, even pleasant, in Cork, while it hurts enough to notice in Belfast. The South is almost entirely agricultural and is social, while the North is filled with factories and notices not to allow your heads to stick out of the windows. The people of the South are poorer but happier; the people of the North are busier and more worried in their looks. The Irishman in the South smiles pleasantly without an apparent thought of the money he is going to make, the Irishman in the North smiles after he gets the money.

* * * * *

All of this Emerald isle is green, and picturesque scenery with lakes and falls, glens and fields, rugged coasts and beautiful beaches is to be found from Queenstown to Portrush.

* * * * *

We stopped a day in Dublin, which is an Irish city with a large tinge of English. It was the capital of Ireland prior to the consolidation of the Irish Parliament with that of Great Britain, and may still be called so because the Lord-Lieutenant Governor lives here and has a sort of a court. There are about 400,000 people, packed in too tightly and with not enough work to keep many of them in decent living and style. That is the trouble in Ireland--one of their troubles, the lack of opportunity for work. There is not much for the energetic young Irishman to do but to emigrate, and he goes to America or Canada or Australia, or even to England, to get a job and a chance. The land is nearly all owned by men who do not live in Ireland, and is rented to farmers who find that when they improve their places it means a raise in rent. The new land law which gives a man a sort of title to his leased land, and makes a court of arbitration as to rent and purchase, is improving conditions in Ireland and they are better off now in respect to land than they are in England, except for the blight of absentee landlordism, the system which takes the rent-money and spends it in London or in Paris.

* * * * *

Dublin is perking up some on the prospect of home rule, which would bring an Irish legislature to Dublin and make the city a real capital. But the prospect for home rule is dubious. The Irish party holds the balance of power in the English Parliament and has been allied with the Liberals in their reforms and the dehorning of the House of Lords. The Liberals have promised the Irish home rule, and the leaders will try to fulfill the promise, but they may find it hard work to line up their followers, and let it go until another general election. There are so many other questions involved in English politics that home rule may be lost in the shuffle, but as the Irish are the best politicians in the world they are looking forward to success after a lovely fight.

* * * * *

The city of Belfast, a hundred miles north of Dublin, is the center of the linen trade. The English Parliament a couple of hundred years ago prohibited the manufacture of wool in Ireland because it competed with English trade, but promoted the spinning of linen. The climate is just right, labor is cheap, and Irish linen is the best in the world. We visited a linen mill, and also a cottage where the hand looms were at work. The wages paid to good hands are 50 to 75 cents a day. This would be fair wages in Europe, but the work is not always steady and many days are lost in setting the patterns and fixing the looms. The manager of the factory said that most of his best men went to America--he himself had two sons in New York. The wages here will keep soul and body together if the body is willing to get along on fish and potatoes. But there is no outcome, no prospect of a future which shall include a beefsteak once a week. The manager had been in America and he knew the difference. “Our workmen are all right because they don’t know the luxuries the American workman has, except by hearsay. Of course if they once get the appetite for meat and a new suit of clothes every year they have to leave us. But a two-eyed beefsteak makes a good meal.” A two-eyed beefsteak is an Irish name for a herring.

Belfast has great ship-building yards, next to Glasgow the greatest in the world. It also has large distilleries which supply England and America. I am told that the consumption of liquor is on the decrease in Ireland. I hope so. But the distilleries keep building additions and enlarging their plants.

Which recalls the old story of the Illinois statesman who was a great drinker and was ruining the prospect of a useful life. His family and friends tried to stop him, but the habit or disease could not be overcome. One night a friend had him out for a walk, trying to sober him up for important business the next day. They passed a distillery and the friend said: “John, what a fool you are to try to drink all the whisky that is made. You can’t do it. See that busy distillery with its bright lights and throbbing engines. You can’t beat it.” John looked, and then with drunken dignity replied: “Perhaps you’re right. But don you shee I’m making ’em work nights?”

* * * * *

The drink problem is the hardest to solve in Great Britain, England, Ireland and Scotland. It is worse than the wage problem or the land problem. In no other countries that I have visited are the evils of booze so plainly in evidence as in the British Isles. In Germany the sight of the family in the beer garden with their mugs of creamy liquid, their good-nature and their temperance, does not make an unpleasant impression. In France and the southern countries, where wine is the common beverage, one does not worry about this custom. But in England, Ireland and Scotland, where you see men and women drunk in the streets and in the gutters, where you see children ragged and barefooted, homes cheerless and pauperism prevalent, all plainly because of the drink, the sensibility of even the most seasoned is shocked. Public-houses with women behind the bars, open seven days in the week and handing out the whisky which temporarily exhilarates and then stupefies and degrades, are one of the companion pictures to the great buildings, wonderful achievements and artistic developments which one sees in every British town. The temperance societies work hard, the government would help if it dared, but the drinking, the suffering and the pauperizing process goes on. The distilleries are enlarging, and working nights.

* * * * *

I talked this matter over with an intelligent Irishman, and he agreed with me that if the drinking of liquor could be abolished it would do away with nine-tenths of the poverty. “But see these poor fellows and how they work,” he said. “Saturday night comes, and who can blame them for having a few pleasant hours even if it is all imagination, and even if they do go to work on blue Monday with aching heads and a little tremble.”

Which is very poor argument, for it does not take in the dependent wives and children. And the Saturday night drunk makes a poor workman on Monday.

* * * * *

On the northern coast of Ireland, near Portrush and a number of beautiful summer resorts, is the Giant’s Causeway. The origin of this really wonderful freak of nature is said by archæologists to be volcanic, and that the Causeway, the adjoining cliffs and several islands are products that came from a volcano in the shape of burning lava, and were then thrown into shape by later explosions as the molten mass was cooling. The Causeway is a formation like a pier extending into the ocean and made up of 40,000 pillars (by Irish count), each a separate column and usually five-or six-sided. They are about twenty feet long, twenty inches in diameter and jointed like mason-work, or more like a bamboo rod. The theory is that as the lava cooled it cracked and shrunk. Perhaps so. Nobody saw it.

I prefer the Irish version, which is simpler and easy to understand.

* * * * *

Fin MacCoul, the giant, was the champion of Ireland. He had knocked out all rivals and no one could stand in front of him for a second round. He was as great a man in Ireland as John L. Sullivan used to be in Boston. Over in Scotland a certain Caledonia giant boasted that he could lick any man on earth, Irish preferred. He gave out an interview to the newspapers, saying that if it were not for the wetting he would cross over and take the Irish championship from Fin. After much of the usual mouth-work between the champions, Fin got permission from the king, constructed the Causeway from Ireland to Scotland, and dared the Caledonian to come across. The Scot was game, and the match was pulled off without police interference, resulting in a victory for Fin, who kindly allowed his beaten rival to settle in Ireland and open a saloon. Ireland was then, as it is now, the finest country in the world, so the Scotchman lived happily ever afterward. The Causeway gradually sank into the sea, and all that is now in sight is the Irish end and a few islands between it and the Scottish coast.

* * * * *

The formation of the coast for several miles each side of the Causeway is the same volcanic rock, and it rises abruptly hundreds of feet high from the sea. Caves and caverns with arches and vaults and echoes, and natural amphitheatres with the pipe organ Fin used to play and the bathtub which he used, are visited by the visitors who go out upon the Atlantic in a row-boat. I have seen Niagara and the Falls of the Rhine, and the Garden of the Gods in Colorado, and a few hundred more wonderful works of Nature or of giants, and the Causeway is not second to any of them.

* * * * *

Our last stop in Ireland is this town of Londonderry, known in Ireland as “Derry.” The London end of the name was put on by King James the First, who was so devoted to his religion that he killed or exiled the Catholic Irish in Ulster and Derry and gave their lands to Protestant emigrants from England. A few years later Cromwell finished the job and got the name of “Thorough,” because of his theory that the only good Irishman was a dead Irishman. There were terrible religious wars in Ireland for years, each side getting even for outrages committed by the other. One great event in the series was the siege of Londonderry by an Irish army under James the Second, who had been run out of England by William of Orange. James was about to enter the city with the consent of the governor, when thirteen apprentice boys banged down the portcullis, closing the entrance. That started the fight, and the people of Londonderry decided to stand the siege. They repulsed the soldiers and James tried to starve ’em out. The siege, which began with no preparation for defense, lasted seven months, and half the population died of starvation. The people ate dogs and cats and rats, a rat selling for three shillings. At last an English fleet broke through the obstruction in the river, and the remnant of the people of Londonderry was saved.

* * * * *

Those were “good old times.” The Protestants of Londonderry knew if they surrendered they would meet the same fate that they had accorded to the Catholics on the capture of Irish towns, and there is hardly a town in Ireland which cannot duplicate the story of the siege of Londonderry. Those days are gone, Irish and English have laid aside their weapons, and except for St. Patrick’s Day or the 12th of July, which is the anniversary of the battle of the Boyne in which William defeated James, there is hardly a broken head in the country from religious causes.

The walls still stand in Londonderry, and some of the cannon of 1689 are mounted at the old stand. But the walls are now a promenade and the cannon are only relics. A Protestant cathedral and a Catholic cathedral, a Presbyterian college and a Catholic college, are doing business side by side, and all are doing good. Two steamship lines have made Derry a regular stop on their way from Glasgow to America. The principal business of the town is the manufacture of linen and whisky, most of which is exported to the United States. And Irishmen from the North of the isle, who want an opportunity and a chance, come to Derry on their way to the best land of all, discovered by the Spanish, developed by the English, and ruled generally by the Irish, known and loved as home now by more Irish than are in Ireland, the U. S. A.

Scotland and the Scotch

GLASGOW, SCOTLAND, September 7.

Scotland is one of the oldest countries of the civilized world. Although it is now united with England and is a part of Great Britain, up to two hundred years ago it had nothing to do with the English except to fight them. The original inhabitants were Celts, and came into history as Picts and Scots, who held possession of the northern part of the country when the Romans conquered England. After the Romans went away the Saxons arrived and practically wiped out all the old Britons in England, but made no headway against the Caledonians or “people of the hills,” as they called the residents of the north. About the ninth century the various tribes were gotten together under one chief or king, and from that time until the union of England and Scotland in 1706 the chief occupation of the Scotch was to fight the English, who were always trying to conquer Scotland, but never succeeding. The Scotch and the English were of different race, language, customs and habits. Much of Scotland, the Highlands, has little room for agriculture, and the people lived a roving life, raising a few sheep and oats, and, whenever they felt like it, making a raid into the Lowlands and into England and bringing back cattle and supplies to last them until the next raid. They were converted to Christianity, but their idea of morality never included an injunction against killing the Lowlander and running off his herd. War was the name under which nations concealed their crimes of robbery, and the Highlanders of Scotland had war all the time; so they were officially justified. When you analyze their romantic history and the great deeds of their heroes you will always find that no matter how strict their character and honor among themselves, they never considered it anything but a praiseworthy action to kill and rob an Englishman. The reformation by John Knox and his contemporaries filled the Scottish heads with religious enthusiasm and devotion, but it did not interfere with the Scottish theory that the English were the natural enemy who must always be fought. And the English, on their side, reciprocated the regard in which they were held by the Scotch, and every king of England who had a chance put in his time trying to conquer the clansmen. Often the English would defeat the Scotch armies and capture their chiefs, but they couldn’t any more hold the Scotch territory than they could hold the red-hot end of a poker.

* * * * *

When Elizabeth, Queen of England, died, the next heir to the English throne was the son of Mary, Queen of Scots, then reigning as James the Sixth, King of Scotland. He was not only the heir, but he was a Protestant, and was, therefore, acceptable, and he was duly crowned as James the First of England. Of course, he went to London to reside, and from that time to the present England and Scotland have had the same king, although it was 100 years later before there was any union of the two governments. In 1706 the Scottish Parliament adopted the act of union, the majority being secured by shameful and open bribery and against the protests of the Scottish people, who did not want to be the tail of the English kite. But the union resulted very beneficially to Scotland, as it changed the occupation from war to commerce and from raising hell to raising sheep. The natural shrewdness of the Celt was stimulated by the industry required in a country where hard work is necessary, and all over the world Scotchmen are known for their ability, their keenness in argument, their thrift and their success. Scotland is as far north as Labrador and Hudson Bay. It has a short growing season and very little fertile soil. I am wearing an overcoat and shivering with cold. That kind of a country raises sturdy and energetic people.

* * * * *

It has rained every day and nearly all the time since we arrived. The Scotch do not seem to mind the wet, but go about their business, clad in rough, warm clothing. I had quite a talk with a bright old Scotchman, and, after I had admitted--just as well give in to a Scotchman without argument--that Scotland was the most beautiful country on earth, I started a diversion by asking him if it rained all the time in Scotland. In very broad dialect he said he would tell us a story that would answer the question. A ship arrived off the Scotch coast, and, as it was raining, the captain decided to delay landing until the storm was over. He waited three weeks before the rain stopped, but finally the sun came out and he put for the shore. Just as he climbed onto the land the sky darkened and the rain began to fall again. Of a Scotch lad standing by, the captain asked: “Does it rain all the time in Scotland?”

“Naw,” said the lad; “sometimes it snaws.”

* * * * *

The agricultural products of Scotland are oats, grass, barley, and a little wheat. The farms are generally small and the soil poor, and the great industry is the raising of sheep. In the manufacturing towns the wool is made into cloth. The chief industry, aside from this, is the distillery, and a great deal of the product is consumed at home. The people are poor, and there is little chance for them to improve their condition and stay in Scotland. The land is owned by big landlords, and hundreds of square miles are kept for hunting by the proprietors of the estates. Work as hard as he may, the Scotch tenant farmer has very little ahead of him except poverty and heaven. The tourists bring a good deal of money to the country, and are separated from it in every way the canny Scot can devise. But in spite of poverty and notwithstanding the evil of intemperance, there is no doubt of the natural brightness of the Scotch.

* * * * *

I had heard all my life of the Scotch heather, and it is one thing in which I was not disappointed. The Scotch moor, which is something between a barren field and a swamp, will raise nothing else, and most of Scotland is moor. Heather is like a weed cedar, if there could be such a thing, and at this season, when it is in bloom, covers the ground with a mat of blue. There is also a white heather, which is rare and to find which is good luck. I was very fortunate, for I picked a bunch of white heather the first attempt. I picked it from a lad for a penny, and I recommend that way of hunting for the white kind. But the blue heather is everywhere, as buffalo-grass used to be on western prairies. Heather is good for nothing, except as a flower, and it will not grow anywhere but in Scotland. It is like the hills and woods and lakes of this country-fair to look upon but not convertible into cash. It is worn by the people, and a man is hardly dressed up unless he has a bunch in his cap or his button-hole. The shamrock will not grow except in Ireland and the heather only in Scotland, and each is held in loving affection by the people of the country because of its constancy and patriotism.

* * * * *

The Scotch have a way of making oatmeal porridge that justifies its reputation. But I tried the “haggis,” and once was enough. I do not know what the component elements of Scotch “haggis” may be, but I suspect that they are the remnants of the last meal minced together, with oatmeal and sheep-blood added to make them palatable. The Scotch people are not high livers. Whatever cannot be made out of oats and mutton is too high-priced for the ordinary citizen. The farm-house is generally divided by a solid wall, the family on one side and the cows and sheep on the other. The people of Scotland always have been poor, and they are not ashamed of it; but they consider it disgraceful to be ignorant or irreligious, so they have as good schools and churches as can be found anywhere outside of America. The men no longer go around with guns and plaids, calling themselves by the names of their clans, but there is much family pride, and the traditions of the good old times of murder and robbery are kept in mind. The English language has taken the place of the old Gaelic for general use, but the English as spoken in Scotland is only about second cousin to the English language as known in Kansas.

Walter Scott wrote the history of Scotland for the world, and it is very fortunate for the clansmen that he did. Scott had a picturesque way of dressing up the costume and character of a dirty highwayman so that he would appear to be the soul of honor and the pride of chivalry. He has given some of the kings and dukes, who committed every crime from arson to murder, the reputation and standing of good and respectable citizens. His historical novels, in so far as their description of royal character is concerned, have the merit of beauty and interest, but not of truth. The Scots were fierce fighters, and in the days when war meant conquest and conquest meant pillage the Scots were unexcelled in all lines. Now that the world is putting up a different standard for success we find the Scotchmen adapting themselves to modern ideas; and in science, invention, law and commerce they can show down with any lot of people twice their size on earth. They are proud of their country, and can recite its legends and its poems of Burns even if they are so poor that they don’t have a square meal a day. They love to argue, state their views positively, contradict flatly, and do not object to taking as good as they send. They are not polite like the Germans, insinuating like the French, or reserved like the English. They are abrupt and inconsiderate, though kind-hearted and helpful, proud and poor, quick-witted and industrious. If they had any other country’s natural advantages they would own the earth.

The Land of Burns

AYR, SCOTLAND, September 9.

Today we have spent in Ayr, the village which bases a claim on fame because in a humble little cottage, just outside its limits, Robert Burns, the great Scottish poet, was born. I call Burns “the great Scottish poet” because it is right that his beloved country should be linked with his name, but, as a matter of fact, Burns is the poet of humanity in every land and every clime. His writings jingle like a familiar song, his thoughts are the thoughts we all think but cannot express, and his music touches the heartstrings like recollections of childhood, a letter from home, or the memory of those who are dear and away. Burns wrote in rhyme the thoughts that came themselves and not thoughts he had worked up for the occasion. A child of poverty himself, he was neither blinded to its troubles nor overcome by its restrictions, and he tells us of the joys and pleasures, the griefs and sorrows of the people. He puts epigrams into verse and he tells of things as they are, looking through the shams and deceits and making good-natured fun of weakness and folly. He never gets away from the human interest and he never fails in knowledge of human nature.

* * * * *

Burns’s father was a farmer, and not a very successful one. He spelled his name Burness, but for some unknown reason the poet shortened it. The father was an honest and religious man who was highly respected, but never made good in a business way. His mother was brighter, and used to sing Scotch songs and ballads, and if there is anything in heredity Robert got his poetic instincts from that side of the house. They were trying to make a nursery pay when Robert was born, and I visited the cottage where that event took place. One end of the shanty with three rooms was for the family and the other with two rooms was for the cattle. The Burnses failed in the nursery business, and rented a small farm near by, on which Robert spent his boyhood days, not far from the taverns in Ayr and Irvine, where he learned how to be a “good fellow” and thus shortened his life. He was 15 years old when he wrote his first verses, and was helping on the farm and going to school. After the father died Robert and his brother tried to run the farm, but the poet got discouraged, and decided to emigrate to Jamaica. A publisher printed his poems, and he intended to take the money he received for them to pay his passage. But the book made a hit from the start, a second edition was called for, and Burns at once attained great popularity. He gave up the idea of leaving Scotland, and put in most of the remainder of his days writing, besides holding a small job which his friends got for him, in the revenue service. He bought a farm near Dumfries, and lived there and in the town the rest of his short life, for he died in 1796, when he was only 37 years of age.

Burns not only enjoyed popularity in his own generation, but in the more than a century since he wrote his fame has grown steadily and his genius and talent are appreciated in every part of the world. There are statues and monuments to Burns all over Scotland, but the greatest memorial is in the hearts of the people of his own country and of all others into which his songs have gone. Wherever there is a son or daughter of Scotland there is a lover of “Bobby Burns.”

* * * * *

It was a little thrilling to be shown the inn where “Tam O’Shanter” loitered that stormy night in Ayr--

“Auld Ayr, wham ne’er a town surpasses,
For honest men and bonnie lasses.”

It will be remembered that Tam and his crony, Souter Johnny, (both honored by statues now,) had spent the evening most merrily, and it came time for Tam to go home to his wife, who had frequently told Tam what would happen to him after one of those sprees. And the poet philosophizes:

“Ah, gentle dames! it gars me greet
To think how mony counsels sweet,
How mony lengthen’d sage advices,
The husband frae the wife despises!”

Tam started for home on his good gray mare, Meg, but when he reached old Alloway Church he saw lights, and, made brave by the Scotch whisky, he boldly looked in. He saw the witches dancing, the devil playing the fifes, and a young woman he knew was in the carousal. Tam foolishly called, the lights went out, and it was up to Meg to get away from the swarm of witches who came in hot pursuit. The leading lady of the gang was right upon poor Tam when he came to the bridge, his hope of escape, for witches cannot cross running water. With one great jump Meg saved her master.

“Ane spring brought off her master, hale,
But left behind her ain grey tail;
The carlin claught her by the rump,
And left poor Maggie scarce a stump.”

I have seen the tavern, the church, the bridge, the statue of Tam, but a grateful public has forgotten to properly commemorate the services of Meg and the sacrifice of the tail.

Across the river Ayr are “the auld brig” and “the new brig” which held a joint debate as reported by Burns’s muse. The city council was recently about to take down the auld brig because it was unsafe, but a general howl went up, and the bridge is to be preserved. All of the relics of Burns are being taken care of, and so far as possible the old cottage and other places connected with his life are restored to the condition they were in when Burns was plowing and quit work to write poetry to a mouse he had stirred out of its nest. I can readily understand why Burns did not make a success as a farmer, for like other poets he did not like to work. However, the dislike for work is not confined to poets, who have more of an excuse for this fault than the rest of us.

* * * * *

I have not yet found a Scotchman who cannot quote Burns’s poetry by the yard. It is all I can do to read most of Burns’s lines, and the words I skip often look rough and jagged. But when a Scotchman recites Burns, the dialect and the broad accent make the rhymes sound like music. The strange syllables fit together in harmony so that one can understand that Burns knew what he was about when he used the local phrases and words in so much of his writing. Burns was a good scholar, and could and did write the purest of English, but he took the homely phrases of the Scottish life to make the common things he writes about ring clear and right.

* * * * *

Ayr is about forty miles from Glasgow. As soon as you leave the Burns neighborhood you get into a country of coal mines, factories, and golf links. There are miles of golf grounds on the moors along the road. Most of the land is only fit to raise heather and lose golf balls. No wonder Burns’s father failed and Robert was going to emigrate. The more I see of Scottish soil the more I take off my hat to the Scotch farmers, who must be the bravest men in the world.

* * * * *

About fifty years ago Andrew Carnegie, then a lad of a half-dozen years, took his father by the hand and led him onto the ship at Glasgow which brought them to America. In all the Scotch towns there are Carnegie libraries and other benefactions from the Scotch boy. His shrewdness and industry are the result of Scotch character when given full play in an open field. On the other hand, Burns with his talent and his weakness exhibits another result of the sentimental yet canny Scot who sees through humanity and analyzes it.

To read the poetry of Robert Burns is to be wiser, better and happier. The day spent in this little nook in which he began his life has brought much of Burns’s surroundings vividly to my mind. The little hovel in which he was born contrasts with the great monument reared by a grateful country, and proves his words if they needed proof:

“A king can make a belted knight,
A marquis, duke, and a’ that,
But an honest man’s aboon his might,
Guid faith, he mauna fa’ that.
For a’ that and a’ that,
Their dignities and a’ that,
The pith of sense and pride o’ worth,
Are higher rank, than a’ that.”

The Journey’s End

STEAMSHIP CAMERONIA, September 21.

For some unexplainable reason the ship homeward-bound is always slow. When one leaves his own country on a journey to other lands he is in no hurry. The new pictures that constantly present themselves, the new objects and the talk that suggests new ideas, hopes and plans, make the days go swiftly by and the voyage is never too long or tiresome. But when months of travel have exhausted the appetite for sights, and the occurrence of the strange no longer starts a thrill, the thoughts of the traveler far exceed the speed of the ship and the fastest boat that crosses the Atlantic is too slow. This is the only excuse I can find for the Cameronia, which sailed four days later than scheduled, and has developed no traits which will be affectionately remembered by the present passengers. She is a new ship, and not finished. I suppose the Anchor line needed the money or it would not have started a vessel across the ocean with so many things not completed and untried. And then the Cameronia has shown great ability as a pitcher, also as a roller, and if a contest is begun as to what ship can pitch and roll, kick and buck and snort the best, I will back the Cameronia against the field.

* * * * *

The ocean along the northern coast of Ireland has a habit of being busy. The currents from the south and the Arctic meet the turbulent waves from the Irish Sea, and a watery Donnybrook fair is the result. The Cameronia enjoyed the opportunity, and although the passengers generally took their evening meal a majority of them went dinnerless to bed, and they went early and with much haste. There is no known remedy for seasickness. The Rockefeller foundation which is discovering wonderful germs, on which every other ill can be laid, has not found the bacillus which started the trouble on the Cameronia. The ship’s doctor calmly advises you to put your finger down your throat and aid nature in her work. He assures you that the disease is not fatal, although you may wish it were, and he encourages you in the faith that every minute will be your next. The seasick ones lose temporarily any other trouble or ailments, and often forget their own names, imagining probably that these have gone with the rest. The story is told of a time like the one in question, that a sympathizing officer came to a man and woman who were leaning against each other with a common misery. “Is your husband very sick?” he inquired of the evidently cultured and modest lady. “He’s not my husband,” she faintly answered, as she leaned on her companion once again. “Your brother?” continued the butter-in. “I never saw him before,” she murmured, clasping again at the wobbly supporter under discussion.

* * * * *

This is a Scotch boat, and she has some Scotch traits. The Scotch people are wonderful. In a land which is nearly all poor pasture and good golf links, they have developed a citizenship which intellectually leads the world. But they are not given to covering up unpleasant spots and they do not go too strong for things of mere beauty or comfort. There is no blarney-stone in the Highlands. The Scotch are probably the poorest hotel managers in the world. The graces and the pleasantry of the continent are despised, and everything coming to a Scotchman is expected on the day it is due. This habit of thrift is necessary in a land where it has always been a fight for man to get a result in the way of bread or meat or porridge. There is little humor in the Scotch nature, and every action is based on serious thought. The Cameronia is getting us across just as was promised, but with no frills or furbelows in the way of personal attention or entertainment.

* * * * *

Of course there is a great deal in their viewpoint, and what seems right and proper in one country is often looked upon with horror in another. Sunday on the Cameronia was Sunday as it is in Glasgow. The Anchor line would no more sail a ship without divine service than it would without a rudder. It would no more permit the pianist to play secular music like “America” or “Swanee River” on Sunday than it would allow a passenger to take the captain’s place. But all the Sabbath Day the Anchor line sells booze openly and without a compunction of conscience. A compulsorily closed piano and an open bar look strange from the viewpoint of a traveler from Kansas.

* * * * *

I do not want to seem to be faultfinding, so I will only say that the grand concert on the Cameronia was not much worse than is usual on shipboard. Everybody knows that during a voyage some night is designated as concert night, a program is given by the passengers, and a collection taken for the benefit of the Sailors’ Home or some such charitable object. But only those who have actually made the trip and attended a concert realize the painful nature of the operation. A notice is posted on the bulletin board asking for volunteers for the program, and aspiring genius directly or through friends offers itself for the entertainment. A dignified gentleman who can’t tell a funny story but thinks he can is selected for chairman. Sometimes a really good musician or entertainer is inadvertently included in the program, but this is not often. No mistake is made in the choice of pretty girls who take up the collection. Our concert was opened by a bass solo, the guilty party being a man with his name parted in the middle and old enough to know better. He rendered (that’s the proper word) the old Roman favorite, “Only a Pansy Blossom.” When he came to the chorus about a faded flower he waved a yellow chrysanthemum in the air to a tremulo accompaniment. This was not a comic song, but a serious, sentimental selection, and the singer was an Englishman. The Scotch and English in the room heaved sighs and said to each other, “How beautiful!” The Americans poked each other in the ribs and almost wept in the effort to restrain their laughter. Of course he was encored, and he rendered again. This time it was a ballad about the golden tress of my darling, and in the touchiest of the touching lines he drew forth from his vest a piece of female switch, peroxide in color and horsetailish in effect. It was a great effort, and the serious fellow-country-men heaved more sighs of appreciation, while an American girl at my right whispered out of her handerchief, “I know I’m going to scream!” Then a Scotchman sang an Irish song. Now a Scotchman can’t get the Irish brogue any more than he can understand an American joke. He was enthusiastically encored, and responded with a French dialect story, in broad Scotch. It was funnier than he knew. An amateur violinist contributed an execution of a sonata or a nocturne or a cordial of some kind. A famous story-teller recited a few choice bits from the column of some London magazine, on which the American copyright expired many years ago. The chairman in a few touching words then explained the object of the charity for which the fund was to be collected, and the touching was completed by the young ladies with pleasant smiles.

Such is a ship’s concert, and with slight variations it is one of the features of every ocean voyage.

* * * * *

I have alluded to the lack of humor in Great Britain, from the American viewpoint. I heard a good joke on the Scotch, and told it to a small crowd in the smoking-room. The story was of the boy who asked his father why there was such a coin as a farthing, the fourth part of a penny. The father replied that it was to enable the Scotch to be charitable. Nobody laughed, and I resumed a discussion of the weather. About five minutes afterward an Englishman roared with mirth, and shouted to me, “I follow you! I follow you!” I didn’t understand why he was following me until he began my story, which he repeated with explanations and reminders of the proverbial Scotch thrift. Then he told it again and laughed loudly. The others smiled courteously and then face after face broadened, they all “followed,” and nobody appreciated the joke more than the Scotchmen. They told the story to each other and laughed, then hunted up friends and told it until the friends “followed,” and I was pointed out as a humorist. But it was a long and painful operation, and I did not have the courage to try it again. These British cousins are not devoid of humor but their speed limit is far below ours.

* * * * *

The harbor of New York is in sight and the pilot just came aboard. I witnessed an affecting scene. A fellow-passenger shouted vigorously to get the attention of a man who was sitting in the pilot boat. The man looked up, and I could tell the passenger was nervously preparing to ask for important news, perhaps of the strike, or the English elections. He called, “Who’s ahead in the National League?”

* * * * *

No coast looks as beautiful as the shore of home. Even New Jersey looms magnificently at such a time. The passengers are all on deck except those who are hiding articles from the customs officer. The returning Americans are full of enthusiasm. They have seen enough of other lands to know that there is none to compare with the United States, none which comes nearer to giving a man a chance. The foreigners in the first cabin watch the approaching scene with quiet interest. Over in the steerage hundreds of would-be Americans gaze eagerly at the land of hope and promise. Soon they will be welcomed by the Statue of Liberty which holds out the torch of citizenship to every alien with ten dollars in cash and a certificate of health. The American flag appears on passing boats, and it is the most beautiful as it is the most meaning of all the ensigns of all the nations. A man with a German accent tells me how forty years ago, when a mere boy, he came from the fatherland to try his fortune in the New World. This year he went back for a visit, but he had a stateroom and was not in the steerage. He saw the struggle and the lack of opportunity in the country of his birth. Now he is homeward-bound, satisfied that in spite of trusts and politics and coon songs, this is really the land of the free, the nation of opportunity; and as the pilot took charge and the American flag went to the top of the Cameronia’s mast, a tear trickled down his cheek, telling of the joy in his heart.

* * * * * *

Transcriber’s note:

Hyphenation has been standardised.

A Table of Illustrations has been created by the Transcriber and is placed in the Public Domain.

Page 61 — protraying changed to portraying.

Page 113 — commerical changed to commercial.

Page 121 — slipping changed to sipping.

Page 141 — langauges changed to languages.

Page 163 — Boulougne changed to Boulogne.

Page 169 — 1060 changed to 1066.