“Look here! I’ll mak’ it hauf a crown, and though you were ma ain brither I couldna mak’ it less!”
Bailie Robertson of Edinburgh had not the advantage of an early education, nor the prudence to conceal his ignorance. A case was brought before him, in which the owner of a squirrel presented a claim of damages against a person who had it in charge, but who had allowed it to escape. The case was one of great complication, and the bailie was rather at a loss for a time. At length, collecting his faculties, he said to the defendant, “Hoo did it manage to get awa’?”
“The door o’ the cage was open, and it gaed oot through the window,” was the reply.
“Then, hoo did you no’ clip its wings?”
“It’s a quadruped, your honour,” said the defendant.
“Quadruped here, or quadruped there,” argued the magistrate, “if ye had clippit the brute’s wings it couldna hae flown awa’. I maun decide against ye.”
CHAPTER XII
HUMOURS OF SCOTTISH RURAL LIFE
Affording better opportunities for the development of individual character than are to be found in the busy town and crowded city, country life is more congenial also to the growth and exercise of the faculty of original humour. In the denser populations information on every intelligible subject is so readily accessible through the medium of books, magazines, morning and evening newspapers, and courses of lectures, etc., that it is not incumbent on any one to form his or her own idea of any particular matter. Ideas here are supplied ready-made, like everything else, and warranted free from adulteration; and thus your city and townspeople see very generally eye to eye; and from frequency of contact with each other, and the causes already indicated, are forcibly rubbed into something like a general mental, as well as physical, similitude.