I was so struck with the feeling that
he was an absent-minded person that I punched Jone and whispered to him
to go quick and tell him. Jone looked at him and laughed, and said that
was the Highland costume.
Now if that man had had his martial plaid wrapped around him, and had
worn a Scottish cap with a feather in it and a long ribbon hanging down
his back, with his claymore girded to his side, I wouldn't have been
surprised; for this is Scotland, and that would have been like the
pictures I have seen of Highlanders. But to see a man with the upper
half of him dressed like a clerk in a dry goods store and the lower
half like a Highland chief, was enough to make a stranger gasp.
[Illustration: "Jone looked at him and said that was the Highland
costume."]
But since then I have seen a good many young men dressed that way. I
believe it is considered the tip of the fashion. I haven't seen any of
the bare-legged dandies yet with a high silk hat and an umbrella, but I
expect it won't be long before I meet one. We often see the Highland
soldiers that belong to the garrison at the castle, and they look
mighty fine with their plaid shawls and their scarfs and their
feathers; but to see a man who looks as if one half of him belonged to
London Bridge and the other half to the Highland moors, does look to
me like a pretty bad mixture.
I am not so sure, either, that the whole Highland dress isn't better
suited to Egypt, where it doesn't often rain, than to Scotland. Last
Saturday we was at St. Giles's Church, and the man who took us around
told us we ought to come early next morning and see the military
service, which was something very fine; and as Jone gave him a shilling
he said he would be on hand and watch for us, and give us a good place
where we could see the soldiers come in. On Sunday morning it rained
hard, but we was both at the church before eight o'clock, and so was a
good many other people, but the doors was shut and they wouldn't let us
in. They told us it was such a bad morning that the soldiers could not
come out, and so there would be no military service that day. I don't
know whether those fine fellows thought that the colors would run out
of their beautiful plaids, or whether they would get rheumatism in
their knees; but it did seem to me pretty hard that soldiers could not
come out in the weather that lots of common citizens didn't seem to
mind at all.
