The unusual sound terrified the wolves, which, one and all, took to their heels and scampered off in every direction: on observing which, Sandy quietly remarked, "Od, an I'd kenned ye liket the pipes sae weel, I'd a gien ye a spring _afore_ supper." This imperturbable mode of looking at the events of life is illustrated by perhaps the _most_ cautious answer on record, of the Scotsman who, being asked if he could play the fiddle, warily answered, "He couldna say, for he had never tried." But take other cases.

For example: One tremendously hot day, during the old stage-coach system, I was going down to Portobello, when the coachman drew up to take in a gentleman who had hailed him on the road.

He was evidently an Englishman--a fat man, and in a perfect state of "thaw and dissolution" from the heat and dust.
He wiped himself, and exclaimed, as a remark addressed to the company generally, "D----d hot it is." No one said anything for a time, till a man in the corner slily remarked, "I dinna doubt, sir, but it may." The cautiousness against committing himself unreservedly to any proposition, however plausible, was quite delicious.
A more determined objection to giving a categorical answer occurred, as I have been assured, in regard to a more profound question.

A party travelling on a railway got into deep discussion on theological questions.

Like Milton's spirits in Pandemonium, they had "Reason'd high Of providence, fore-knowledge, will, and fate-- Fix'd fate, free-will, fore-knowledge absolute; And found no end, in wand'ring mazes lost." A plain Scotsman present seemed much interested in these matters, and having expressed himself as not satisfied with the explanations which had been elicited in the course of discussion on a particular point regarding predestination, one of the party said to him that he had observed a minister, whom they all knew, in the adjoining compartment, and that when the train stopped at the next station a few minutes, he could go and ask _his_ opinion.