About fifty years ago Andrew Carnegie, then a lad of a half-dozen years, took his father by the hand and led him onto the ship at Glasgow which brought them to America. In all the Scotch towns there are Carnegie libraries and other benefactions from the Scotch boy. His shrewdness and industry are the result of Scotch character when given full play in an open field. On the other hand, Burns with his talent and his weakness exhibits another result of the sentimental yet canny Scot who sees through humanity and analyzes it.
To read the poetry of Robert Burns is to be wiser, better and happier. The day spent in this little nook in which he began his life has brought much of Burns’s surroundings vividly to my mind. The little hovel in which he was born contrasts with the great monument reared by a grateful country, and proves his words if they needed proof:
“A king can make a belted knight,
A marquis, duke, and a’ that,
But an honest man’s aboon his might,
Guid faith, he mauna fa’ that.
For a’ that and a’ that,
Their dignities and a’ that,
The pith of sense and pride o’ worth,
Are higher rank, than a’ that.”