It wad set ye weel to try
yer hand at makin' a man o' him noo."
Had Alec been within hearing, he would never have let his mother forget
this speech. For had not she, the immaculate, the reprover, fallen
herself into the slough of the vernacular? The fact is, it is easier to
speak the truth in a _patois_, for it lies nearer to the simple
realities than a more conventional speech.
I do not however allow that the Scotch is a _patois_ in the ordinary
sense of the word. For had not Scotland a living literature, and that a
high one, when England could produce none, or next to none--I mean in
the fifteenth century? But old age, and the introduction of a more
polished form of utterance, have given to the Scotch all the other
advantages of a _patois_, in addition to its own directness and
simplicity.
For a moment the dominie was taken aback, and sat reddening over his
toddy, which, not daring even to taste it, he went on stirring with his
toddy-ladle. For one of the disadvantages of a broken life is, that
what a person may do with a kind of conscience in the one part, he
feels compelled to blush for in the other. The despotism exercised in
the school, even though exercised with a certain sense of justice and
right, made the autocrat, out of school, cower before the parents of
his helpless subjects.
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