'And so,' I went on, 'we were alive and awake and beginning to make history when you Scots were only bare-legged savages roaming over the hills and stealing cattle.

It was a very bad habit of yours, that cattle-stealing, and one which you kept up too long.' "'No worse a sin than your stealing land from the Indians,' he said.
"'Oh yes,' I answered, 'because it was a smaller one! Yours was a vice, and ours a sin; or I mean it would have been a sin had we done it; but in reality we didn't steal land; we just TOOK it, reserving plenty for the Indians to play about on; and for every hunting-ground we took away we gave them in exchange a serviceable plough, or a school, or a nice Indian agent, or something.

That was land-grabbing, if you like, but it is a habit you Britishers have still, while we gave it up when we reached years of discretion.'" "This is very illuminating," I interrupted, now thoroughly wide awake, "but it isn't my idea of a literary discussion." "I am coming to that," she responded.

"It was just at this point that, goaded into secret fury by my innocent speech about cattle-stealing, he began to belittle American literature, the poetry especially.

Of course he waxed eloquent about the royal line of poet-kings that had made his country famous, and said the people who could claim Shakespeare had reason to be the proudest nation on earth.