To argue from this old love of colour in dress a corresponding delight in flowers would be a mistake, for rural Scotland has few indeed of the English type of cottage, with clustered roses and jessamine and a very wealth of colour in its old-fashioned garden. All through Dumfriesshire and Lanarkshire, eighty-five miles along the road to Glasgow, the country cottages are merely un-ornamental living-boxes, and flower-gardens are vanities not indulged in. Perhaps we see in this, again, the Scottish practical character that has advanced Scotland so far along the road to material wealth, has made Glasgow what it is, and has set Scotsmen in commanding positions. The proverbial tenacity of the Scot has fathered many good stories, of which that of the farmer returning from market is one of the best. Attacked by three burly ruffians for sake of the gold he was supposed to be carrying, he fought desperately, felling one of his assailants with a blow that knocked him senseless, until at last a well-delivered butt in the stomach laid him low; whereupon the footpads went thoroughly over his pockets. But searching diligently though they did, all they could find was a sixpenny-piece, instead of the expected wealth. “My goodness!” exclaimed one of them, feeling his bruised face, “if he’d had eighteen-pence he would have killed the three of us.” The pawky “canny” qualities of the Scots were never more admirably illustrated than on that occasion in the football season of 1905, when the visit of the New Zealand team, known as the “All Blacks,” was under arrangement. The Glasgow authorities had not at the time arrived at anything like a proper idea of the New Zealanders’ qualities, nor of the great assemblage of spectators that any game in which they were engaged would attract; and so they cautiously refused the offer of half the gate-money and stipulated for a guarantee of £50 or so, conceding the “gate” to the visitors. An agreement was arrived at upon that basis, but as the season advanced and the extraordinary triumphs of the New Zealanders elsewhere made it abundantly evident that the “gate” at the Glasgow match would be phenomenal, the Glaswegians made heroic attempts to alter the arrangement—without success. An incredible number of saxpences went bang over that affair, for the Glasgow folks received £50 and paid over £1,000, taken at the gates. And the New Zealanders won the game, in addition to pouching the boodle. Scotland was sair humeeliated the day, ye ken, and showed it sourly. The New Zealanders came without a welcome into the city, were “booed” in the field, and left amid something like a hostile demonstration. XXXI [Sidenote: _MERKLAND CROSS_]