Noo, tak’ this close fisted Scot they’re a’ sae fond o’ pokin’ fun at.  Let’s consider ane o’ the breed.  Let’s see what sort o’ life has he been like to ha’ led.  Maybe so it wull mak’ us see hoo it came aboot that he grew mean, as the English are like to be fond o’ calling him.

Many and many the canny Scot who’s made a great place for himsel’ in the world was born and brocht up in a wee village in a glen.  He’d see poverty all aboot him frae the day his een were opened.  It’s a hard life that’s lived in many a Scottish village.  A grand life, aye—­ne’er think I’m not meaning that.  I lived hard masel’, when I was a bit laddie, but I’d no gie up those memories for ought I could ha’ had as a rich man’s son.  But a hard life.

A laddie like the one I ha’ in mind would be seein’ the auld folk countin’ every bawbee because they must.  He’d see, when he was big enow, hoo the gude wife wad be shakin’ her head when his faither wanted, maybe, an extra ounce or twa o’ thick black.

“We maun think o’ the bairn, Jock,” she’d be saying.  “Put the price of it in the kist, Jock—­ye’ll no be really needin’ that.”

He’d see the auld folk makin’ auld clothes do; his mither patching and mending; his faither getting up when there was just licht to see by in the morn and working aboot the place to mak’ it fit to stand the storms and snows and winds o’ winter, before he went off to his long day’s work.  And he’d see all aboot him a hard working folk, winning from a barren soil that they loved because they had been born upon it.

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.