Shanghai's Latest Tribute to the Bard.
As Shanghai grows so the Scotsmen within its borders increase in multitude; so too grows the number of those who desire to join in that most homely and delightful of gatherings, the Burns anniversary dinner. President McLeish of the St. Andrews' Society looked down, on Monday night, the length of three long tables, on a company which taxed to its limit the large private dining room of the Shanghai Club. The poet's namesake, Mr. W. S. Burns, and a few associates had been hard at work some days previously, hanging the walls with green festooning, set with shields of the clans and other devices of much meaning to the North Briton though mystic to all besides; twining the pillars with creepers, and giving the whole plage a Scottish aspect and atmosphere. A handsome present from Mr. C. Murray Adamson—a beautiful oil portrait of the poet—occupied a place of distinction right opposite the Chairman, who had behind him the royal arms of Scotland. For some time before piper Robertson preceded the President to his seat, the corridors and lobby had resound ded with the language of hill and heather, and Gaelic in all its varieties was the undisputed tongue of the evening. The Dinner Committee had soon to it that the feast did honour to the occasion and from the spray of heather by the side of each plate, to the' drams" direct from the "auld Countrie," nothing was lacking. The Town Band stationed in an ante-room, played appropriate airs and the climax was reached when Mr. Vico-President Murray, heralded by the bagpipes, bore in the first haggis and led a triumphant circuit of the rooms.
Tu due course came the speech-making, opened in loyal fashion by the President, who, in giving the " King," those magnetic and charming qualities, which have given his Majesty not only a warm place in his people's affections but have won him high applause as the nation's statesman.
Sir Cuantes Dupceos was next called upon to give the toast of the evening, The Immortal Memory of Robert Burns." He said—When I was asked to propose this toast, I shied most distinctly against the responsibility of doing so, because though I belong to that part of our country with which the name of Burns is most intimately associated, I held that I was thereby the less qualified to do justice to the toast, for the reason that the name of Burns in Dumfriesshire so much a part of our associations, I might almost say of ourselves, that we perhaps, while giving place to none in our admiration of his transcendent poetical powers, are somewhat inclined to treat the question of Burns as something in the nature of a family affair, and we all know what full measure of criticism is measured out to us in our family circles. After the innumerable speeches which have been made in adulation of our "ploughman poet after all that has been said of the world influences which he has exerted, it is a difficult matter to add anything new or original to the panegyric which the world has passed upon his works. I do not propose to make any attempt in that direction; all that I propose is an attempt at a short presentation to you of Burns, not as the poet but as the man. (Hear, hear.) He was a man imbued with an intensity of human feeling and power of expression, and also it must be admitted, imbued with failings, in the expression of which he also exhibited a considerable measure of intensity. When Burns wrote "4 man's a man for w' that," I have always been inclined to think that there was something stirring in his mind beyond the actual subject of his song, that he was giving expression to the sadness which in later years caused him to describe himself as "a poor, damned, incautious, duped, unfortunate fool; the sport, the miserable victim of incautious pride, hypochondriac imaginations, agonising sensibilities, ynd bedlam passions." But yet, in his own case at least, was not Burns fully justified in maintaining that "a man's o man for that," a justification to which the whole world bears witness? (Hear, hear.) Gentlemen, although the line' that I am taking up in dealing with my toast may seem perhaps to be an unusual one, I still hope that I' may succeed in putting before you some short picture of Burns not wholly uninteresting. It has been said of Burs that he represented both what is the noblest, and much that is erring in our Scottish character. He was brought up, as we know, in circumstances of extreme poverty, and under the strictest discipline of rigid Calvinism, and it has been suggested that it was a consequence of this Calvinistic training, that caused Burns to revolt against. the narrowness
gloomy discipline which the Kirk claimed of such teachings, to revolt against the over its people, and as one of Burns' biographers says, as a consequence of such revolt Burns did more than give Scotland songs to sing and rhymes to read; he showed that laughter and the joys of life need be no crimes, and that freedom of thought and sentiment and action is within the reach of him who will stretch forth his hand to take it." His demonstration, the same biographer says, may have been pushed to extremes. It was, no doubt; and some of his writings might best have been left unwritten, ("No.") But whatever may have been his faults and failings, he was a leader amongst men, a leader who shaped his lines upon freeing his countrymen from the rule of an ultra-austere cleric calism, to teach them the pleasures which were to be found in the beauties of life, to teach them in fact, as has been well said of him, "the truth that maketh free." (Applause.) In the absence of some such teacher as Burns, "the Scotland that ho loved so well and took such pride in honouring, could scarce have been the Scotland she is, had he not been." Wo delight in remembering Burns as the ploughman who with this feeling of revolt in his mind against his wretched surroundings—surroundings which he afterwards described himself as a combination of "the cheerless gloom of the hermit with the unceasing toil of the gallery-slave"—burst into the noble lines, which we have printed on our programme this avenin; "That I for poor auld Scotland's sake, Some useful plan or book could make, Or sing a sang at least!" and most nobly did he make his plan, most nobly did he sing his sang." From the obscurity of these early surroundings Burns. emerged in 1786, when his first volume of poms was published in Kilmarnock—a work which brought him the magnificent profit of £20. Towards the end of that year he found his way to Edinburgh, and there Burns made full use of his opportunities not only in literary circles, but in circles of a less straight-laced nature. It has been said that though Edinburgh was Burns's triumph, it was also his destruction, and
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.