It need scarcely be added that General S⸺ did not on that occasion suffer himself to follow his usual custom.
And despite the heavy odds against him there have yet been times when Sandy stood in high favour in high quarters in the English capital. Thus in the year 1797, when the Democratic notions ran high, the King’s coach was attacked as His Majesty was going to the House of Peers. A gigantic Hibernian on that occasion was conspicuously loyal in repelling the mob. Soon after, to his no small surprise, he received a message from Mr. Dundas to attend at his office. He went, and met with a gracious reception from the great man, who, after passing a few encomiums on his active loyalty, desired him to point out any way in which he would wish to be advanced, His Majesty having particularly noticed his courageous conduct, and being desirous to reward it. Pat scratched and scraped for a while, as if thunderstruck—
“The devil take me if I know what I’m fit for.”
“Nay, my good fellow,” cried Henry, “think a moment, and do not throw yourself out of the way of fortune.”
Pat hesitated another moment, then smirking as if some odd idea had taken hold of his noddle, he said—“I tell yez what, mister, make a Scotchman of me, and, by St. Patrick, there’ll be no fear of my getting on.”
The Minister gazed a while at the mal-apropos wit—“Make a Scotsman of you, sir, that is impossible, for I cannot give you prudence.”
Prudence is just what Paddy has always lacked, and what to all appearance he is never to learn. Had it been a special characteristic of John Bull, it would have saved him from many a coup he has received at the instance of his cautious and calculating brother Sandy, the following among the rest. A stout English visitor to one of the fashionable watering-places on the West Coast some years ago was in the habit of conversing familiarly with Donald Fraser, a character of the place, who took delight in talking boastfully of his great relations, who existed only, the stranger suspected, in the Highlander’s own lively imagination. One day, as the Englishman was seated at the door of his lodging, Donald came up driving a big fat boar.
“One of your relations, I suppose, Donald?” exclaimed the visitor, chuckling, and nodding his head in the direction of the “porker.”
“No,” quietly retorted Donald, surveying the proportions of his interlocutor, “no relation at all, sir, but just an acquaintance, like yoursel’.”
“My late esteemed friend, Mr. John Mackie, M.P. for Kirkcudbrightshire,” writes the garrulous and entertaining author of Reminiscences of Fifty Years, “used to describe an extensive view which one of his friend’s hills commanded. This he never failed to call to the attention of his English visitors when the weather was clear. Willy the shepherd was always the guide on such occasions, as he knew precisely the weather that would suit.