And he'll remember, aye, most Scots will be able to remember, how the kists on a dozen mantels ha' been broken into to gie help to a neighbor in distress wi'oot a thocht that there was ought else for a body to do but help when there was trouble and sorrow in a neighbor's hoose.
Aye, I've heard hard jokes cracked aboot the meanness o' the Scot.
Your Scot, brocht up sae in a glen, will gang oot, maybe, and fare into strange lands to mak' his living when he's grown--England, or the colonies, or America.

Where-over he gaes, there he'll tak' wi' him the canniness, the meanness if ye maun call it such, his childhood taught him.

He'll be thrown amang them who've ne'er had to gie thocht to the morrow and the morrow's morrow; who, if ever they've known the pinch o' poverty, ha' clean forgotten.
But wull he care what they're thinkin' o' him, and saying, maybe, behind his back?
Not he, if he be a true Scot.

He'll gang his ain gait, satisfied if he but think he's doing richt as he sees and believes the richt to be.

Your Scot wad be beholden to no man.