It is a tower of strength for a boy to have a hero.
It gave me a pang to find when I reached America that there was any other country which pretended to have anything to be proud of.

What was a country without Wallace, Bruce, and Burns?
I find in the untraveled Scotsman of to-day something still of this feeling.

It remains for maturer years and wider knowledge to tell us that every nation has its heroes, its romance, its traditions, and its achievements; and while the true Scotsman will not find reason in after years to lower the estimate he has formed of his own country and of its position even among the larger nations of the earth, he will find ample reason to raise his opinion of other nations because they all have much to be proud of--quite enough to stimulate their sons so to act their parts as not to disgrace the land that gave them birth.
It was years before I could feel that the new land could be anything but a temporary abode.

My heart was in Scotland.

I resembled Principal Peterson's little boy who, when in Canada, in reply to a question, said he liked Canada "very well for a visit, but he could never live so far away from the remains of Bruce and Wallace.".