On Scotchmen.

Evening Star, Issue 7367, 12 November 1887, Page 1 (Supplement)

On Scotchmen.

Max O’Rell agrees with Dean Ramsay in denying the truth of Sydney Smith’s dictum about the surgical operation. . He even goes so far as to pronounce the Scotch “ the most witty” of all the inhabitants of the “more or less United Kingdom.” And he not only says it, but he proves it—in an amusingly naive fashion. The Scotch have appreciated Max O’Rell’s lectures better than the English. They know a witty thing, that is to say, when they hear it: Q.E.D, Next to their wit, what seems to have pleased him most about the Scotch is their democratic spirit. “ In Scotland,” he says, “even the beggars have none of those abject manners that denote their class elsewhere,” and he illustrates his point by rather a nice story I remember one in Edinburgh, who stopped me politely, yet without touching his cap, and said ; ‘ You look as if you had had a good dinner, sir; won’t you give me something to buy a meal with ? ’ I took him to a cook-shop and bought him a pork pie. ‘lf you don’t mind,’ said he, ‘l’ll have veal.’ Why, certainly, everyone to his taste, to be sure. I acquiesced with alacrity. He was near shaking hands with me,” Another beggar incident which Max O’Rell tells as having happened to him in Edinburgh shows, in another way, a truly fraternal feeling. The beggar, who carried a violin, asked him for a penny. But why, inquired Max O’Rell, don’t you play for it ? “ Give me the penny,” rejoined the beggar, “ and don’t make me play. I assure yon you won’t regret it.” Such delicacy was irresistible. Max O’Rell lost his penny, but saved his ears. In a more serious vein, he goes on to point out the genuinely popular character of the Scotch universities. These differ essentially, he says, from Oxford and Cambridge in two respects—they do some work there, and they are open to the people. At Oxford and Cambridge, he adds, the question about a freshman is not whether he is clever, but what his father is. In Scotland, as in France, every one is a gentleman who is well educated. This is quite true, but the conception of Oxford and Cambridge is a trifle out of date, or rather, perhaps, very much up to date, up to the level, indeed, of “Pleasure”at Drury Lane. ■; It is, however, in his analysis of Scotch shrewdness that Max O’Rell is at his Here, for instance, is a very “ happy thought”: “Money is round, say the English, it was meant to roll; money is flat, say the Scotch, it was meant to be piled up, and they know how to do it.” “ Tell me what company a man keeps and I will tell you his character,” Max O’Eell varies the rule a little. He shows his readers what prayers the Scotchman says: -—“ln his daily litanies the Scotchman enters into the most trifling details with careful forethought; the list of favors he has received, and for which he has to return thanks; the list of the blessings he wishes for, and will certainly receive, for God cannot refuse him anything—all this

to present to his prodigious memory. He dots his i’s as we say in France ; and if by chance he should happen to employ a rather far-fetched expression, he explains it to the Lord, so that there shall be no danger of misunderstanding what he asks for —he corners him. Thus I was one day present at evening prayers in a Scotch family, and heard the master of the house, among a thousand other supplications, make the followingoLord, give us receptivity; that is to say, 0 Lord, the power of receiving impressions.” The entire Scotch character is there.

What forethought! what cleverness! what a business-like talent! * Pall Mall Gazette.’