Maybe it's meanness for folk like that to be canny, to be saving, to be putting the bawbees they micht be spending on pleasure in the kist on the mantel where the pennies drop in one by one, sae slow but sure. But your Scot's seen sickness come in the glen. He kens fine that sometimes there'll be those who couldna save, no matter how they tried. And he'll remember, aye, most Scots will be able to remember, how the kists on a dozen mantels ha' been broken into to gie help to a neighbor in distress wi'oot a thocht that there was ought else for a body to do but help when there was trouble and sorrow in a neighbor's hoose.
Aye, I've heard hard jokes cracked aboot the meanness o' the Scot. Your Scot, brocht up sae in a glen, will gang oot, maybe, and fare into strange lands to mak' his living when he's grown—England, or the colonies, or America. Where-over he gaes, there he'll tak' wi' him the canniness, the meanness if ye maun call it such, his childhood taught him. He'll be thrown amang them who've ne'er had to gie thocht to the morrow and the morrow's morrow; who, if ever they've known the pinch o' poverty, ha' clean forgotten.
But wull he care what they're thinkin' o' him, and saying, maybe, behind his back? Not he, if he be a true Scot. He'll gang his ain gait, satisfied if he but think he's doing richt as he sees and believes the richt to be. Your Scot wad be beholden to no man. The thocht of takin' charity is abhorrent to him, as to few ither folk on earth. I've told of hoo, in a village if trouble comes to a hame, there'll be a ready help frae ithers no so muckle better off. But that's no charity, ye ken! For ilka hoose micht be the next in trouble; it's one for a' and a' for one in a Scottish glen. Aye, we're a clannish folk, we Scots; we stand together.
I ken fine the way they're a' like to talk o' me. There's a tale they tell o' me in America, where they're sae fond o' joking me aboot ma Scotch closefistedness. They say, yell ken, that I was playing in a theatre once, and that when the engagement was ended I gie'd photographs o' masel to all the stage hands picture postcards. I called them a' together, ye ken, and tauld them I was gratefu' to them for the way they'd worked wi' me and for me, and wanted to gie 'em something they could ha' to remember me by.
"Sae here's my picture, laddies," I said, "and when I come again next year I'll sign them for you."
Weel, noo, that's true enough, nae doot—I've done just that, more than the ane time. Did I no gie them money, too? I'm no saying did I or did I no. But ha' I no the richt to crack a joke wi' friends o' mine like the stage hands I come to ken sae well when I'm in a theatre for a week's engagement?
I've a song I'm singing the noo. In it I'm an auld Scottish sailor.
I'm pretendin', in the song, that I'm aboot to start on a lang voyage.
And I'm tellin' my friends I'll send them a picture postcard noo and
then frae foreign parts.
"Yell ken fine it's frae me," I tell my friends, "because there'll be no stamp on the card when it comes tae ye!"
Always the audience roars wi' laughter when I come to that line. I ken fine they're no laughin' at the wee joke sae much as at what they're thinkin' o' me and a' they've heard o' my tightness and closeness. Do they think any Scot wad care for the cost of a stamp? Maybe it would anger an Englishman did a postcard come tae him wi'oot a stamp. It wad but amuse a Scot; he'd no be carin' one way or anither for the bawbee the stamp wad cost. And here's a funny thing tae me. Do they no see I'm crackin' a joke against masel'? And do they think I'd be doing that if I were close the way they're thinkin' I am?
Aye, but there's a serious side tae all this talk o' ma being sae close. D'ye ken hoo many pleas for siller I get each and every day o' ma life? I could be handin' it out frae morn till nicht! The folk that come tae me that I've ne'er clapped een upon! The total strangers who think they've nowt to do but ask me for what they want! Men will ask me to lend them siller to set themselves up in business. Lassies tell me in a letter they can be gettin' married if I'll but gie them siller to buy a trousseau with. Parents ask me to lend them the money to educate their sons and send them to college.