CONCLUSION
"It is the knowledge that Scotsmen have done their share in building
up the great Republic that makes them proud of its progress and
inspires them to add to its glories and advantages in every way.
Scotsmen, as a nationality, are everywhere spoken of as good and loyal
citizens, while Americans who can trace a family residence of a
century in the country are proud if they can count among their
ancestors some one who hailed from the land of Burns, and it is a
knowledge of all this, in turn, that makes the American Scot of to-day
proud of his country's record and his citizenship and impels him to be
as devoted to the new land as it was possible for him to have been to
the old had he remained in it. In America, the old traditions, the old
blue flag with its white cross, the old Doric, are not forgotten, but
are nourished, and preserved, and honored, and spoken by Scotsmen on
every side with the kindliest sentiments on the part of those to whom
they are alien. Americans know and acknowledge that the traditions and
flag and homely speech have long been conserved to the development of
that civil and religious liberty on which the great confederation of
sovereign republican States has been founded. In the United States,
Sir Walter Scott has more readers and quite as enthusiastic admirers
as in Scotland, and if Americans were asked which of the world's poets
came nearest to their hearts, the answer would undoubtedly be--Robert
Burns.
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