In pleasing contrast,
and certainly our chief success, was "The Gathering of
the Clans," or Scottish picnic. So many milk-white
knees were never before simultaneously exhibited in
public, and, to judge by the prevalence of "Royal
Stewart" and the number of eagles' feathers, we were a
high-born company. I threw forward the Scottish flank
of my own ancestry, and passed muster as a clansman
with applause. There was, indeed, but one small cloud
on this red-letter day. I had laid in a large supply
of the national beverage in the shape of the "Rob Roy
MacGregor O' Blend, Warranted Old and Vatted"; and this
must certainly have been a generous spirit, for I had
some anxious work between four and half-past, conveying
on board the inanimate forms of chieftains.
To one of our ordinary festivities, where he was the
life and soul of his own mess, Pinkerton himself came
incognito, bringing the algebraist on his arm. Miss
Mamie proved to be a well-enough-looking mouse, with a
large limpid eye, very good manners, and a flow of the
most correct expressions I have ever heard upon the
human lip.
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