My friend the Triumphant Democrat, fiercest of radicals and kindest of
men, expresses his scorn for monarchical institutions (and his
invincible love for his native Scotland) by tenanting, summer after
summer, a famous castle among the heathery Highlands. There he proclaims
the most uncompromising Americanism in a speech that grows more broadly
Scotch with every week of his emancipation from the influence of the
clipped, commercial accent of New York, and casts contempt on feudalism
by playing the part of lord of the manor to such a perfection of
high-handed beneficence that the people of the glen are all become his
clansmen, and his gentle lady would be the patron saint of the
district—if the republican theology of Scotland could only admit saints
among the elect.
Every year he sends trophies of game to his friends across the sea—birds
that are as toothsome and wild-flavoured as if they had not been hatched
under the tyranny of the game-laws. He has a pleasant trick of making
them grateful to the imagination as well as to the palate by packing
them in heather. I’ll warrant that Aaron’s rod bore no bonnier blossoms
than these stiff little bushes—and none more magical. For every time I
take up a handful of them they transport me to the Highlands, and send
me tramping once more, with knapsack and fishing-rod, over the braes and
down the burns.