For my part, I believe I may say I was not afraid, but intensely excited. I felt that something was about to be revealed to me; this was the reason why my hand trembled so as to knock Shakespeare, Bacon, and Donnelly in one commingled heap of fallen glory to the floor. I was curious, fascinated, and highly wrought. The wild and fitful little shape bewilderingly wriggled and flickered in the light, and his ghast and fixed eye was painful to endure. Yet I felt that we two had not met without reason. Instinct told me we should do business. He was the jerkiest and perkiest little figure I had ever clapped eyes on. He bore his head with confident, nay impudent, erectness; his arms waved like a windmill's; and his shapeless little legs straddled all over the place in a succession of purposeless leaps and flings and prancings. So quick and fidgety were his movements that it was not easy to catch the details of his dress; but I saw that his tartan was a spider's web, to whose check the slimy snail had imparted a variety of hue unknown to Macgregor or Macpherson; his bonnet was a flowering thistle; his philabeg was made of the beards of oat-florets; his buckle was a salmon's scale; and a blade of finest rye dangled proudly by his side. "Ye'll know me the noo if ye'll speir lang enoo," he squealed ironically when I had stared for some moments. "Gape and glower till your lugs crack, but ye canna' alter the fact that a' great men are Scots. Burrrns was Scottish, and Allan Ramsay, and Blair, and Thomson, Smollett, and Hume, and Boswell, and Adam Smith, and Stewart, and Hogg, and Campbell; and ay, Sir Walter Scott, Tam Carlyle, and Lord Brougham; and Chalmers, and Brewster, and Lyell, and Livingstone, and Macbeth, and McGinnis; Macchiaveli, the Maccabees; and Macaronis, the Macintoshes and Macrobes; and what reason hae ye to suppose that the author of Shakespeare's _Plays_ was an exception?" "Oh, I don't know," I said, "but--er--have I had the pleasure of meeting you before?" "Bah!" said he, hastily dancing a strathspey, "ma fute is on ma native dew, ma name is Roderick; I am," he continued, drawing himself up to the full height of his figure, which was about six inches, "I am the Speerit o' Scottish Literature." "Oh, I know you now," I said, "you're the spirit men call the Small Scotch." "Where will ye find the Small Scotch that's fu' sax inches in height?" answered Roderick, with asperity. "Oh, I beg your pardon," I said. "But I didn't ring for you, did I?" "I'm no slave o' the ring," proudly answered Roderick, as he broke into the opening steps of a complicated sword-dance. "I came of my ain sweet will, just to improve your mind." "That's very kind," said I; "will you take a chair, or a tumbler?" The Spirit hissed angrily, as if a small soda had been poured over him, and I prudently abstained from further interruptions.