What delighted me most was the courtesy and grace, the sparkling witticisms of these people when receiving us, so natural and free from any of the snobbery and formalities of society. We were entertained by the rich and they were polished and educated and I can speak in the highest praise of them, and yet I think I felt more grateful when eating a potato from the bare board-table in an Irish hut with the good dame pressing me to take just another one, than I did with my feet under the mahogany of some wealthy host, the table loaded with silver and served with the richest viands. This may be strange in me, yet I cannot help it, for God has made me up in that way.
We visited Scotland, the “land o’ cakes,” as well as “the land of the leal,” and I was delighted with the brusque, frank manners of its people.
They are an honest, manly race, careful to keep all they have and to get as much as they can, but honestly. One of them said: “We are sair strict in making a bargain, but when it is closed we abide it, aye to our ain loss.” They are all aristocrats by nature, of the manly kind, and the mechanic with grimy hands and greasy clothes at work, will look one in the eye, and talk as nobly as if he was the chief of some Highland clan, to doff his cap to no man.
They were a study to me in many ways. A little incident I recall. One morning, going out of the hotel, my boots rather tarnished with the everlasting mud—for as they told me that it always rains there except when it snaws, there is always mud—I hailed a boy boot-black with cheeks as red as ripe cherries. While he was doing his job, I asked a policeman near by how much I should give him. “A penny,” he said. On handing this to my little friend, he, raising his cap with all the politeness of a polished courtier said, “Wad ye no gie me the other wing o’ that?” My hair was so thick that his meaning did not penetrate my understanding until he had bowed and gone, and I then realized his idea of the necessity of two wings for anything to fly properly. One great mental fault of mine is nearly always being a little behind time. My best thoughts often come just after their opportunity. I was pleased with the rosy cheeked lasses, so full of health and purity, and I think I rather offended my wife by saying that if I was not already wifed I would try to win one of Scotia’s fair daughters.
Then back to England, in a round of sight-seeing and visits among the Britons, where, led by my wife, I was well received, though inwardly I felt with some questioning as to my rank and station. This is the great characteristic of the English. Their first question is, not what you are as a man, in ability, attainments or morals, but what is your standing or caste in “society.” And probably the newest made, the fledglings in society, with the thinnest kind of blue blood in their veins, would be the most exacting, whose pedigree would be greatly damaged by the slightest investigation.
This society fad notion of the English, is worse than their oppressive fogs, and, like the sight of a black pall at a funeral, making one tread softly and speak in whispers. Some one, remarking of this, said that when out calling the lady of the house came up close to her without bowing, with a prying, inquisitive look, saying, “I really don’t know who you are,” but after learning the rank of her caller she became amiability itself. To give them their due, when once you are inside their ring, and are acquainted, you know, they are very kind and agreeable.
I had often read of the Arctic regions, and traveling to my humor inclined, I suggested to my traveling companion that we go to the extreme, or as far as we could, and see the contrast, if not of Greenland’s icy mountains, then those of Norway, with India’s burning sands. And a contrast it was, so much so that my oriental bones ached with the cold, and I was glad when our steamer turned its prow southward to come under the sun again.
Yet I shiver even now as I think of that indescribable, penetrating cold, for the blood under my tropical skin seemed to stagnate and congeal. I thought of Dr. Johnson’s remark about his visit to the Hebrides, “worth seeing, but not worth going to see.” But he was such an old egotistic exaggerator that I do not accept everything he says as gospel true.
Yet one saying of his I could heartily endorse, remembering the tips I had to make in England, worse than the baksheesh among the natives in India. “Let me pay Scotland one just praise—there was no officer gaping for a fee; this could have been said of no city on the English side of the Tweed.”
The constant tips to every one at every turn is a real nuisance. England may boast of her freedom, yet all her people are in the bonds of slavery to the tipping custom. I fell in with a couple of young English gentlemen just starting for China to spend their holidays. They said they could better afford a foreign tour than to accept invitations from their friends, as it would be less expensive, for at each house they might visit, they would have to tip everybody, not with shillings, but with sovereigns. My American friend spoke of this as one of the fads that the Anglo-maniacs were trying to introduce into his country, because it was good form, “like the English, you know.”