As I gaze on the face of the heather hill."
Aye, Annie, the "nameless rapture" swells in the bosom of every Scotchman worthy of the name, when he treads the heather.
Andrew M.'s prize song, "The Emigrant's Lament," has the power of a flower to symbolize the things that tug hardest at the heart-strings very strongly drawn. By the way, let it here be recorded, this is a Dunfermline song, written by Mr. Gilfillan—three cheers for Dunfermline! (that always brings the thunder, aye, and something of the lightning too). The Scotchman who left the land where his forefathers sleep sings:
"The palm-tree waveth high, and fair the myrtle springs,
And to the Indian maid the bulbul sweetly sings;
But I dinna see the broom wi' its tassels on the lea,
Nor hear the linties sang o' my ain countrie."
There it is, neither palm-tree nor myrtle, poinsetta nor Victoria Regia, nor all that luscious nature has to boast in the dazzling lands of the south, all put together, will ever make good to that woe-begone, desolate, charred heart the lack of that wee yellow bush o' broom—never! Nor will all "the drowsy syrups of the East," quiet the ache of that sad breast which carries within it the doom of exile from the scenes and friends of youth. They cannot agree, in these days, where a man's soul is, much less where it is going; let search be made for it close, very close, to the roots of that ache. It is not far away from the centre which colors the stream of man's life.
Many times to-day, in the exhilaration of the moment, one or another enthusiastic member called out, "What do ye think o' Scotland noo?" and even Emma had to confess in a half-whisper that England was nothing to this. Perry and Joe had never been beyond the border before, and gave in their adhesion to the verdict—there is no place like Scotland. "Right, Perry!"
Scotland's Flowers.