The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1906-01-26

z n
lialred OF cant and religious pretenc,
earned MIN the bitter hatred of tht
Holy N1llies' of his time. but endear.
ed him to honest believers in a pure
feilglon. His patriotism was a part OF
ms very being and, although a Iowa
SUBJECT of King George, he never for
+ got that he was Scottish subject and
1 am sure that he would have reioic-
ed. had he been alive today. to think
mat King Edward had accepted the
resignation of one Scottish Prime Min
lister only to find that his choice of a
successor lay between two more.
Burns was a sociable soul.
BORN FOR HIS FELLOWS.
How he would have enjoyed himself
IN such gathering as this. 1t is, I
think, certain that il was this very
socla bflity, added to the fact that his
company and conversation were so
much sought after, which led him in
TO occasional excuses. especially in
those last dark days in Dumfries His
lille was constant battle with poverty
and adversely and it can hardly be
wondered that he sometimes sought to
drown his sorrows with whisky. under
the influence of which he wrote and
said things which he afterwards sim
cerely regretted. Amid all the struggles
and gloom of his short life he was
ever ready to help his fellow-sufferer
whether they were mice or meni His
sympathetic soul sorrowed over the
cruel fate of the slave and wept for
the wounded hare.
do not know of a better way of
arriving at some idea of Burns, char
acteristics and genius than by a glance
at the character of his works. In the
time available it is impossible to do
more than merely mention few songs
and poems which are typical of his
varying moods and proofs of the YER
satility already remarked on ITO
Mary in Heaven" is perhaps his finest
purely English piece and it would be
a feather in the cap of any of our
present day poets to produce such a
gem, but Burns was certainly at his
best in the Doric. Imagine the man
who wrote ITO Mary in Heaven be-
ing the author of THE Address to the
Deli and chuckling to think that he
might maybe turn a corner jinkin'
and cheat him yet!' He even has a
himself:
But fare We weel auld MCKEE Ben,
O! wad ye TAX a thocht and men
Ye aiblins micht-I dinna ken
Yet haze a stake:
I'm wac to think upon yon den
Even for your sake!"
INSPIRED BY A MOUSE NEST.
The turning up of a. mouse's nest or
a belated daisy with his plough in
spires him to those delightful and pa
thetic odes. How wildly he pictures
the tremendous catastrophe in the
poor mousie's life:
Wee sleekit, cow'ring, tim'rous beas-
tie.
,! what a panic's in thy breastie!''
He tells of its struggles to make its
little home
Thou saw the fields laid bare and
waste,
And weary Winter comm fast,
And cosy here beneath the blast
Thou thocht to dwell
Fill crash the cruel coulter passed
Dot through thy CELL
That wee bit heap O. leaves and stib-
BILE
las cost thee mony a weary nibble,
Sow thou's turned DOT for "a thy
trouble,
But hoose or hauld,
o thole the winters sleety dribble
An cranreuch cauld''
nd then the oft-quoted moral
But, Mousie. thou art no thy lane
n proving foresight may be vain,
he best-laid schemes O. mice and men
Gang aft agley,
nd leave us nocht but grief and pain
For promised joy I
ate'' and recorded for all time the
Dying words of Poor Mailie." his ain :
pet yowe," who wept for the wound
d hare, for whose all-embracIng
ympathy nothing was too lowIy or in 5
gniicant, suddenly bursts forth into
nat glorious hymn of humanity "A
lan's a man for a that That is the
ist of the American Declaration of In
ependence; that was the gist of the
agna Charea; it breathes the spirit
E our unwritten British Constitution
oday and it will one day be the watch :
ord of all the nations of the earth,
lack, white. brown or yellow:
Then let us pray that come it may,
s come it will for a that.
hen man to man the warld Ger I
nall brithers be for a that"
BURNS A SATIRIST. =
And then his satires: Holy Willie's
rayer," characterized by Scott as the s
verest bit of satire that Burns ever
rote, in which he lashes with his y
orn the religious hypocrites of which
oily Willie was the prototype: Death 7
Id Doctor Hornbook." in which he
llories the pedantic schoolmaster who S
to pose as a doctor; THE r
va Herds The Ordination" and
he Holy Fair" are all bitingly Sc T
re, although the big men in the Kirk
that day whom he castigates are