Ah! you suit me, Scotia, and
proud am I that I am your son." (Andrew Carnegie, _Our Coaching Trip_,
p. 152. New York, 1882.)]
In this mood we reached Dunfermline. Every object we passed was
recognized at once, but everything seemed so small, compared with what
I had imagined it, that I was completely puzzled. Finally, reaching
Uncle Lauder's and getting into the old room where he had taught Dod
and myself so many things, I exclaimed:
"You are all here; everything is just as I left it, but you are now
all playing with toys."
The High Street, which I had considered not a bad Broadway, uncle's
shop, which I had compared with some New York establishments, the
little mounds about the town, to which we had run on Sundays to play,
the distances, the height of the houses, all had shrunk. Here was a
city of the Lilliputians. I could almost touch the eaves of the house
in which I was born, and the sea--to walk to which on a Saturday had
been considered quite a feat--was only three miles distant. The rocks
at the seashore, among which I had gathered wilks (whelks) seemed to
have vanished, and a tame flat shoal remained. The schoolhouse, around
which had centered many of my schoolboy recollections--my only Alma
Mater--and the playground, upon which mimic battles had been fought
and races run, had shrunk into ridiculously small dimensions.
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