"I know why it is," said Elizabeth. "We have all of us, we Scots, a queer daftness in our blood. We pretend to be dour and cautious, but the fact is that at heart we are the most emotional and sentimental people on earth." "I believe you're right," said Stewart Stevenson. "The ordinary emotional races like the Italians and the French are emotional chiefly on the surface; underneath they are a mercantile, hard-headed breed. Now we----" "We're the other way round," said Elizabeth. "You can see that when you think what type of man we chiefly admire," said Mr. Jamieson; "you might think it would be John Knox----" "No, no," cried Elizabeth; "I know Father has hankerings after him, but I would quake to meet him in the flesh." "Sir Walter Scott," suggested Mr. Stevenson. "Personally I would vote for Sir Walter," said Mr. Seton. "Ah, but, Mr. Seton," said John Jamieson, "I think you'll admit that if we polled the country we couldn't get a verdict for Sir Walter. I think it would be for Robert Burns. Burns is the man whose words are most often in our memories. It is Burns we think of with sympathy and affection, and why? I suppose because of his humanity; because of his rich humour and riotous imagination; because of his _daftness_, in a word----" "It is odd," said Elizabeth; "for by rights, as Thomas would say, we should admire someone quite different. The _Wealth of Nations_ man, perhaps." "Adam Smith," said Stewart Stevenson. "You see," said Mr. Seton, "the moral is that he who would lead Scotland must do it not only by convincing the intellect, but above all by firing the imagination and touching the heart. Yes, I can think of a good illustration. In the year 1388, or thereabouts, Douglas went raiding into Northumberland and met the Percy at Otterbourne. We possess both an English and a Scottish account of the battle. The English ballad is called 'Chevy Chase.' It tells very vigorously and graphically how the great fight was fought, but it is only a piece of rhymed history. Our ballad of 'Otterbourne' is quite different. It is full of wonderful touches of poetry, such as the Douglas's last speech: 'My wound is deep I fain would sleep: Take thou the vanguard of the three; And hide me by the bracken bush That grows on yonder lilye lee. O bury me by the bracken bush, Beneath the blooming briar; Let never living mortal ken That ere a kindly Scot lies here!'" James Seton got up and walked up and down the room, as his custom was when moved; then he anchored before the fire, and continued: "The two ballads represent two different temperaments. You can't get over it by saying that the Scots minstrel was a poet and the English minstrel a commonplace fellow. The minstrels knew their audience and wrote what their audience wanted. The English wanted straightforward facts; the Scottish audience wanted the glamour of poetry."