
Dreaming Back 
In Which My New Friend Entertains with Tales of Ghosts and 
Goblins and I Have a Strange Experience with a Torch—Part Four 
HE Scotch fiddler has read my 
He account of meeting McGregor, 
and he has taken some excep- 
tion to Mac’s language. He tells me 
that so far as I’ve gone my Scotch has 
been good enough, but that I haven’t 
put in enough of it. 
“You’ve just sprinkled in a word 
here and there,” he criticised, ‘an’ I’m 
sure the McGregor spoke broader than 
that.” 
“He did,” said I, “but if I wrote as 
he spoke—” 
The Fiddler interrupted. 
“You mean if you could write as he 
spoke.” 
“Yes,” I allowed, smiling: “if I 
could and did write as Mac spoke, the 
readers of this literary production 
would not be able to understand.” 
“Then it’d be their loss. Are you 
sure you understood?” 
“My grandmother, on my mother’s 
side, came from Scotland,” said I. 
I saw a shrewd grin come across 
the Fiddler’s face. I’ve heard him say 
that “many like to claim kinship with 
the Scot.” 
208 
McGregor recites Tam o’Shanter 
By FRED A. BARROW 
“Oh, well: gang your gait. What’ll 
you be writing now?” 
“About the fascinating time I had 
by the camp-fire, with old Mac recit- 
ing the poetry of Robert Burns.” 
“Um, aye. Well, I’ll leave you to’t. 
Better let me see the thing before you 
send it in.” 
He’s a great chap, the Scotch Fid- 
dler. He has an admiration for my 
stuff, which he endeavors to conceal; 
and this tickles me much more than 
would his open expression of approval. 
After his slighting remarks he strode 
to the door of my room, pausing there 
to look back at me with a friendly grin, 
and mutter, jestingly, “Scribbler!” 
fan I rest my arm on the desk with 
the red blotter, I recall a poster 
I’ve seen to-day on New York bill- 
boards, that advertises a motion-pic- 
ture play. The picture showed a fam- 
ily of four seated about a camp-fire. 
There was the father, holding a 
“loaded” frying pan over the fire, and 
munching a sandwich; there was the 
little boy, sitting on a log, and hold- 
ee 
ee 
> £9 ge mp tee 
~ 
ie 
ing a tin pannikin in one hand and a 
sandwich in the other; there was th 
little girl, also munching a sandwich: 
then there was the mother, looking 
sorrowfully at the fire-flame. The 
title of the picture was “The Out. 
casts.” H 



| LOOKED at the picture, while my 
thoughts traveled back along the 
years, and I murmured to myself, 
“Happy Outcasts!” [ 
Good Mother Nature; what a tere 
rible cruelty to be thrown back into 
your kindly arms! I positively envied 
those outcasts! . 
And now I dream back to that eve- 
ning, ever to be remembered, when I 
entertained, and was entertained in 
front of the camp fire before my “— 
by my first visitor. 
’ 
We had eaten most heartily. Mae 
had loaded up a blackened corncob 
with “home-grown” tobacco, and lit it 
with a blazing twig from the fire; and 
I also had begun to send incense aloft 
amid the groves that were God’s first 
temples. 1 
