out what I could not deny, they must just learn to behave themselves
better when they come to see us, or bide at home.

Being by nature a Scotsman--being, I say, of the blood of Robert Bruce
and Sir William Wallace--and having in my day and generation buckled on
my sword to keep the battle from our gates in the hour of danger, ill
would it become me to speak but the plain truth, the whole truth, and
anything but the truth. No; although bred to a peaceable occupation, I
am the subject of a free king and constitution; and, if I have written as
I speak, I have just spoken as I thought. The man of learning, that kens
no language saving Greek, and Gaelic, and Hebrew, will doubtless laugh at
the curiosity of my dialect; but I would just recommend him, as he is a
philosopher, to consider for a wee, that there are other things, in
mortal life and in human nature, worth a moment's consideration besides
old Pagan heathens-pot-hooks and hangers--the asses' bridge and the weary
walls of Troy; which last city, for all that has been said and sung about
it, would be found, I would stake my life upon it, could it be seen at
this moment, not worth half a thought when compared with the New Town of
Edinburgh. Of all towns in the world, however, Dalkeith for my money.
If the ignorant are dumfoundered at one of their own kidney--a tailor
laddie, that got the feck of his small education leathered into him at
Dominie Threshem's school--thinking himself an author, I would just
remind them that seeing is believing; and that they should keep up a good
heart, as it is impossible to say what may yet be their own fortune
before they die. The rich man's apology I would beg; if in this humble
narrative, this detail of manners almost hidden from the sphere of his
observation, I have in any instance tramped on the tender toes of good
breeding, or given just offence in breadth of expression, or vulgarity of
language. Let this, however, be my apology, that the only value of my
wonderful history consists in its being as true as death--a circumstance
which it could have slender pretensions to, had I coined stories, or
coloured them so as to please my own fancy and that of the world. In
that case it would have been very easy for me to have made a Sinbad the
Sailor tale out of it--to have shown myself up a man such as the world
has never seen except on paper--to have made Cursecowl behave like a
gentleman, and the Frenchman from Penicuik crack like a C