to knock my uncle Adam down;
and indeed I believe it must have come to a rupture at last, if they
had not given a dinner party at which I was the lion. On this occasion I
learned (to my surprise and relief) that the incivility to which I had
been subjected was a matter for the family circle, and might be regarded
almost in the light of an endearment. To strangers I was presented with
consideration; and the account given of "my American brother-in-law,
poor Janie's man, James K. Dodd, the well-known millionaire of
Muskegon," was calculated to enlarge the heart of a proud son.

An aged assistant of my grandfather's, a pleasant, humble creature with
a taste for whisky, was at first deputed to be my guide about the city.
With this harmless but hardly aristocratic companion I went to Arthur's
Seat and the Calton Hill, heard the band play in Princes Street Gardens,
inspected the regalia and the blood of Rizzio, and fell in love with the
great castle on its cliff, the innumerable spires of churches, the
stately buildings, the broad prospects, and those narrow and crowded
lanes of the old town where my ancestors had lived and died in the days
before Columbus.

But there was another curiosity that interested me more deeply--my
grandfather, Alexander Loudon. In his time the old gentleman had been a
working mason, and had risen from the ranks--more, I think, by
shrewdness than by merit. In his appearance, speech, and manners, he
bore broad marks of his origin, which were gall and wormwood to my uncle
Adam. His nails, in spite of anxious supervision, were often in
conspicuous mourning; his clothes hung about him in bags and wrinkles,
like a ploughman's Sunday coat; his accent was rude, broad, and
dragging. Take him at his best, and even when he could be induced to
hold his tongue, his mere presence in a corner of the drawing-room, with
his open-air wrinkles, his scanty hair, his battered hands, and the
cheerful craftiness of his expression, advertised the whole gang of us
for a self-made family. My aunt might mince and my cousins bridle, but
there was no getting over the solid, physical fact of the stonemason in
the chimney-corner.

That is one advantage of being an American. It never occurred to me to
be ashamed of my grandfather, and the old gentleman was quick to mark
the difference. He held my mother in tender memory, perhaps because he
was in the habit of daily contrasting her with uncle Adam, whom he
detested to the point