ANDREW CARNEGIE
The fact that Andrew Carnegie is a Scotsman has, so far as I know, never been refuted nor denied. Scotland is a wonderful country in which to slip the human product. Then when this product is transplanted to a more sunshiny soil we sometimes get a world-beater.
Scotland is a good country to be born in; and it is a good country to get out of; and at times it may be a good country to go back to.
I once attended a dinner given to James Barrie in London. One of the speakers sprung the usual joke about how when the Scotch leave Scotland they never go back. When Barrie arose to reply he said: "Perhaps it is true that the Scotch, when they leave their native land, seldom return. If so, there is surely precedent. In truth, Englishmen have been known to go to Scotland, and never return. Once there was quite a company of Englishmen went to Scotland and they never returned. The place where they went was Bannockburn." In literature Scotland has exceeded her quota. From Adam Smith, with his deathless "Wealth of Nations," and Tammas, the Techy Titan, with his "French Revolution," to Bobbie Burns and Robert Louis, the Well-Beloved, we have a people who have been saying things and doing things since John Knox made pastoral calls on Mary Queen of Scots, and saw the devil's tail behind her chair.
Doctor Johnson pretended to hate the Scotch, but he lives for us only because he was well Boswellized by a Scotchman. And now nobody knows just how much of Boswell is Doctor Johnson and how much is Boswell.
What Connecticut has done for New England, Scotland did for Great Britain. The Scotch gave us the iron ship, the lamp-chimney, the telephone. Also, they supplied us Presbyterianism. And this being true, they also supplied the antidote in David Hume.
We have been told that it is necessary to agree with a Scotsman or else kill him. But this is a left-handed libel, like unto the statement that the reason the Scotch cling to breeks is because the breeks have no pockets, and when the drinks are mentioned Sandy fumbles for siller, but is never able to find the price, and so lets some one else foot the bill. Another bit of classic persiflage is to the effect that there are no Jews in Scotland, because they could no more exist there than they could in New Hampshire, and this for a like reason: they find competition too severe.