Friend Mac Donald Part 12

It was enough to make a Frenchman cry, "Stop thief!"

I was fain to console myself, however, with the thought that in France we can draw pictures of the Last Judgment too, but with a decided improvement on this arrangement of figures. To look for John Knox in ours would be sheer waste of time.

As to Robert Burns, who certainly was no saint, far from it, I do not remember to have seen him, but I guarantee that he is to be found in the midst of the angels, beside Beethoven, Shakespeare, Raphael, Victor Hugo, and kindred spirits.

The following anecdote, told me in Scotland, will perhaps tend to prove that even the libations of overnight do not hinder a true-born Scot from believing himself in Paradise the following morning.

Donald had imbibed whisky freely in the house of a friend, and towards two in the morning set out for home, describing wonderful zigzags as he went.

It suddenly occurred to him, in one of those lucid moments which the tipsiest man will occasionally have, that the cemetery of Kirkcaldy formed a short cut to his house. He steered for the place, but had not gone far when an open grave arrested his progress. He tried to jump, his foot caught, he slipped, and the next moment was lying full length in the improvised bed. Here he soon fell fast asleep. About six in the morning the Kirkcaldy coach came speeding past, the coachman making the air ring with a shrill trumpet blast. Donald awakes, rubs his eyes, and, taking it to be the Last Trump calling the elect from their tombs, arises awe-stricken. He looks around him. No one; not a soul!

"Weel, weel," cries Donald; "weel, weel, this is a fery puir show for Kirkcaldy!!!"

The French beggar accosts one with a "G.o.d bless you." If he is blind, he plays the flute. The Scotch beggar's stock-in-trade is generally a Bible. For a penny he will recite you a chapter; Old and New Testament are equally familiar to him. If he is blind, he does the same as his English _confrere_: he reads aloud from a Bible printed in raised characters.

Those who can get enough to invest in an organ or a _discordeon_ abandon the Bible business, which is not lucrative. Besides, turning the handle is easy work; whereas learning the Bible by heart demands study.

The beggar reciting the Bible to fill his pocket is very well; but he does not come up to the preaching street arab.

A learned professor at the University of Aberdeen told me, last February, that he was one day accosted by a beggar-boy of about ten, who asked him for a penny.

"A penny! What are you going to do to earn it?" asked the professor.

"Shall I sing?" replied the boy.

"No."

"Shall I dance?"

"No."

"Shall I preach?"

The professor pulled out his penny without "asking for further change."

I cannot take leave of performing beggars without relating a little incident that I was a witness of in Edinburgh:

A beggar came up to me, asking for alms.

"You have a violin there," I said to him; "but you do not play it. How is that?"

"Oh, sir!" he replied; "give me a penny, and don't make me play. I a.s.sure you you won't regret it."

I understood his delicacy, and to show him that I appreciated it launched out my penny.

"But," I added, "do you never use your violin?"

"Yes, sir, sometimes," he said, lowering his voice, "as a threat."

I lost my penny, but saved my ears.

CHAPTER XI.

The Scotch Sabbath. -- The Saviour in the Cornfield. -- A good Advertis.e.m.e.nt. -- Difference between the Inside and the Outside of a Tramcar. -- How useful it is to be able to speak Scotch in Scotland. -- Sermon and Lesson on Balistics at Edinburgh. -- If you do Evil on the Sabbath, do it well.

The Lord's day is not called Sunday in Scotland, but the Sabbath, which is more biblical.

The Scotch Sabbath beats the English Sunday into fits.

I thought, in my innocence, that the English Sunday was not to be matched.

Delusion on my part.

How hope to give a description of the Scotch Sabbath? It is an undertaking that might frighten a far more clever pen than mine.

Happily, in this also, the Scotch anecdote comes to my rescue.

Here is one, to begin with, which will show once more how difficult it is to trip up a Scotchman. Nothing is sacred for him when he wants to get himself out of a difficulty.

A Free Kirk minister met a member of his congregation, and thus addressed her:

"Mary, I am glad to have met you; for I have something on my mind that I have been anxious to speak to you of for a long while. I have heard--but it surely cannot be--I have heard that you sometimes go for a walk on the blessed Sabbath."

"Ay, meenister, it is quite true; but I read in the Bible that Our Lord walked through the cornfields on the Sabbath day."

"I do not deny it," replied the good man, a little disconcerted; "but,"

he added, recovering his self-possession, "let me tell you that if the Saviour did take a walk on the Sabbath, I dinna think the more of Him for 't."

I one day read, in an Edinburgh paper, the following letter, addressed to the editor of the paper by a Scotch minister. This minister had been accused by his antagonist of having been seen taking a walk through one of the parks on the Sabbath.

What an advertis.e.m.e.nt that letter was!

This is how it ran: