It is interesting to preserve national peculiarities which are thus passing away from us.  One great pleasure I have had in their collection, and that is the numerous and sympathetic communications I have received from Scotsmen, I may literally say from Scotsmen in all quarters of the world; sometimes communicating very good examples of Scottish humour, and always expressing their great pleasure in reading, when in distant lands and foreign scenes, anecdotes which reminded them of Scotland, and of their ain days of “auld langsyne.”

There is no mistaking the national attachment so strong in the Scottish character.  Men return after long absence, in this respect, unchanged; whilst absent, Scotsmen never forget their Scottish home.  In all varieties of lands and climates their hearts ever turn towards the “land o’ cakes and brither Scots.”  Scottish festivals are kept with Scottish feeling on “Greenland’s icy mountains” or “India’s coral strand.”  I received an amusing account of an ebullition of this patriotic feeling from my late noble friend the Marquis of Lothian, who met with it when travelling in India.  He happened to arrive at a station upon the eve of St. Andrew’s Day, and received an invitation to join a Scottish dinner party in commemoration of old Scotland.  There was a great deal of Scottish enthusiasm.  There were seven sheep-heads (singed) down the table; and Lord Lothian told me that after dinner he sang with great applause “The Laird o’ Cockpen.”

Another anecdote arising out of Scotsmen meeting in distant lands, is rather of a more serious character, and used to be told with exquisite humour by the late lamented Dr. Norman Macleod.  A settler in Australia, who for a long time had heard nothing of his Scottish kith and kin, was delighted at the arrival of a countryman direct from his own part of the country.  When he met with him, the following conversation took place between them:—­Q.  “Ye ken my fouk, friend; can ye tell me gin my faather’s alive?” A.—­“Hout, na; he’s deed.” Q.—­“Deed!  What did he dee o’? was it fever?” A.—­“Na, it wasna fever.” Q.—­“Was it cholera?” A.—­“Na.”  The question being pressed, the stranger drily said, “Sheep,” and then he accompanied the ominous word by delicately and significantly pointing to the jugular under his ear.  The man had been hanged for sheep-stealing!

It must always be amusing for Scotsmen to meet in distant lands, and there to play off on each other the same dry, quaint humour which delighted them in their native land, and in their early days at home.  An illustration of this remark has been communicated by a kind correspondent at Glasgow.  Mrs. Hume, a true Scot, sends me the following dialogue, accompanied by a very clever etching of the parties, from the Melbourne Punch, August 17, 1871, headed “Too Poor,—­Night of Waverley Concert.”

Southron.—­You here, Mac! you ought to have been at the concert, you know.  Aren’t you one of the ‘Scots wha hae?’