I know of a Scotch father who bought a house for a thousand pounds and sold it to his son, six months later, for twelve hundred.
That is not all.
The son had not the money in hand, and it was the father who advanced the cash—at five per cent.
Considering the price money is at nowadays, it was an investment to be proud of.
Do not imagine that the father ran the least risk of losing the capital: he took a mortgage on the house.
The son, seeing that the money had been advanced to him at high interest, paid off his father as quickly as he could. He is now his own landlord, and Papa is on the look-out for another good investment.
I should pity the reader, even were he a Scotchman as seen through Sydney Smith's spectacles, if he took this Caledonian for a typical portrait of the Scotch father.
At the beginning of this volume, I compared the Scot to the Norman, and I may say that I have witnessed, in Normandy, little scenes of family life which are quite a match for those I have just described. But the actors in them were peasants.
I am indebted to a doctor in the neighbourhood of Aberdeen for the following anecdote: