The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1899-04-04
Great Treat at the Assembly Hall
Last Evening.
CHARACTER OF THE SCOTS
WITH READINGS FROM THE
LECTURERS WRITINGS.
Two Things Only Scots Reverence,
Their Religion and Learning
With Pathos and Humor "The
Greatest Scot Since Sir Walter
Held His Audience SpelIbound.

Ian Maclaren's lecture last evening
was one of the greatest treats the lit
erary-loving people have enjoyed for
many a day. DR.. Watson has the rare
gift of putting himself in complete
touch with his hearers and of carrying
them with him without apparent eff
fort and with absolute naturalness
through the regions of humor and
pathos which he traverses.
The Assembly hall was crowded to
overlooking, and the doctor for nearly
two hours held the audience SPELL
bound while he discoursed on Some
Traits of Scottish Character" and at
intervals read extracts from 1.-THE Bon
ME Briar Bush and other of the works
which have made him famous.
While the doctor is master of the
Scottish dialect, his natural accent,
which cropped out in his side talks, is
pure English of the best and most
pleasing type-round, full and resonant,
without the slightest suggestion of af-
fectation. He has wonderful power
of pathos, and although humor is
blended with it to some extent, pathos
predominates. Scotch humor he defined
as irony, and irony as a sense of the
paradoXeS of life, of the unexpected
ness of life. of the sadness of life. The
humor of the Scot is dry, drastic, in
tellectual, sometimes burning. The
Scot is slow to appreciate jest. When
he hears a jest he must first be given
time to decide whether it is really a
jest or not, and if, when he has thought
it over for two or three days, he de-
cides that it is, none will give it greater
appreciation than he. He will not
laugh, even then, but will find in it
deep, silent enjoyment. 1t has been
charged, the doctor said, that the Scots
are not romantic. On the contrary,
however, he affirmed that they are so
romantic they are afraid that anyone
should know just how romantic they
are, and he gave some very feeling in
cidents of what appeared to be cynical,
hard-headed, practical old Scotchmen
nursing romances for half a century
with the tenderest care and the deep
est feeling, and may be only giving
away their secrets when on their
deathbeds, and, even then, with the
greatest reticence and shamefaced-
ness. Some, said the doctor, think we
Scots are hard headed and cold
blooded. Our manner is less than gen
ial and not ELUSIVE. Our misfortune
is not to be able to express our feel
ings. This inability is allied to our
strength; strong people conceal their
feelings. Tell your secret to a Scot,
and it is lost as If you had dropped it
into a we'll; but if you have a secret
you want everybody to know, tell it
to southerner Can Engiishman) under
the promise that he will not divulge it.
The Scot is endowed with an excess of
caution and unnecessary reserved
ness, but he is really profoundly senti-
mental.
The doctor spoke of the love of the
Scots for learning, a trait which is not
confined to the weather. classes, but is
found in the very humblest. Rambling
into cottage in the Highlands, one is
apt to find it glorified by book-shelves,
the contents of which are usually tro-
pixies of the son of the house. who has
won them at college, who has given
his time his labor, perhaps his life,
for learning; and the path which leads
from the cottage to the university has
not been allowed to become grass
grown. The Scot regards only two
things with absolute reverence-his re-
ligion and learning. If one had pointed
out a millionaire in Drumtochty, no