



Produced by Les Bowler





PENELOPE'S EXPERIENCES IN SCOTLAND

Being extracts from the commonplace book of Penelope Hamilton

By Kate Douglas Wiggin

1913 Gay and Hancock edition



                            To G.C.R.



Contents.

     Part First--In Town.

     I.     A Triangular Alliance.
     II.    Edina, Scotia's Darling Seat.
     III.   A Vision in Princes Street.
     IV.    Susanna Crum cudna say.
     V.     We emulate the Jackdaw.
     VI.    Edinburgh society, past and present.
     VII.   Francesca meets th' unconquer'd Scot.
     VIII.  'What made th' Assembly shine?'.
     IX.    Omnia presbyteria est divisa in partes tres.
     X.     Mrs. M'Collop as a sermon-taster.
     XI.    Holyrood awakens.
     XII.   Farewell to Edinburgh.
     XIII.  The spell of Scotland.

     Part Second--In the Country.

     XIV.   The wee theekit hoosie in the loaning.
     XV.    Jane Grieve and her grievances.
     XVI.   The path that led to Crummylowe.
     XVII.  Playing 'Sir Patrick Spens.'
     XVIII. Paris comes to Pettybaw.
     XIX.   Fowk o' Fife.
     XX.    A Fifeshire tea-party.
     XXI.   International bickering.
     XXII.  Francesca entertains the green-eyed monster.
     XXIII. Ballad revels at Rowardennan.
     XXIV.  Old songs and modern instances.
     XXV.   A treaty between nations.
     XXVI.  'Scotland's burning!  Look out!.'
     XXVII. Three magpies and a marriage.




Chapter I. A Triangular Alliance.


     'Edina, Scotia's Darling seat!
      All hail thy palaces and towers!'


Edinburgh, April 189-.

22 Breadalbane Terrace.

We have travelled together before, Salemina, Francesca, and I, and we
know the very worst there is to know about one another. After this point
has been reached, it is as if a triangular marriage had taken place,
and, with the honeymoon comfortably over, we slip along in thoroughly
friendly fashion. I use no warmer word than'friendly' because, in the
first place, the highest tides of feeling do not visit the coasts of
triangular alliances; and because, in the second place, 'friendly' is
a word capable of putting to the blush many a more passionate and
endearing one.

Every one knows of our experiences in England, for we wrote volumes
of letters concerning them, the which were widely circulated among
our friends at the time, and read aloud under the evening lamps in the
several cities of our residence.

Since then few striking changes have taken place in our history.

Salemina returned to Boston for the winter, to find, to her amazement,
that for forty odd years she had been rather overestimating it.

On arriving in New York, Francesca discovered that the young lawyer whom
for six months she had been advising to marry somebody more worthy than
herself was at last about to do it. This was somewhat in the nature of
a shock, for Francesca had been in the habit, ever since she was
seventeen, of giving her lovers similar advice, and up to this time no
one of them has ever taken it. She therefore has had the not unnatural
hope, I think, of organising at one time or another all these
disappointed and faithful swains into a celibate brotherhood; and
perhaps of driving by the interesting monastery with her husband and
calling his attention modestly to the fact that these poor monks were
filling their barren lives with deeds of piety, trying to remember their
Creator with such assiduity that they might, in time, forget Her.

Her chagrin was all the keener at losing this last aspirant to her hand
in that she had almost persuaded herself that she was as fond of him as
she was likely to be of anybody, and that on the whole she had better
marry him and save his life and reason.

Fortunately she had not communicated this gleam of