The manner and circumstance of their offering whiskey to a stranger
amply illustrates their point of view towards it. Thus at my first
lecture in Glasgow where I was to appear before a large and
fashionable audience, the chairman said to me in the committee room
that he was afraid that there might be a draft on the platform. Here
was a serious matter. For a lecturer who has to earn his living by
his occupation, a draft on the platform is not a thing to be
disregarded. It might kill him. Nor is it altogether safe for the
chairman himself, a man already in middle life, to be exposed to a
current of cold air. In this case, therefore, the chairman suggested
that he thought it might be "prudent"--that was his word,
"prudent"--if I should take a small drop of whiskey before
encountering the draft. In return I told him that I could not think
of his accompanying me to the platform unless he would let me insist
on his taking a very reasonable precaution. Whiskey taken on these
terms not only seems like a duty but it tastes better.

In the same way I find that in Scotland it is very often necessary to
take something to drink on purely meteorological grounds. The weather
simply cannot be trusted. A man might find that on "going out into the
weather" he is overwhelmed by a heavy fog or an avalanche of snow or a
driving storm of rain. In such a case a mere drop of whiskey might
save his life. It would be folly not to take it. Again,--"coming in
out of the weather" is a thing not to be trifled with. A person coming
in unprepared and unprotected might be seized with angina pectoris or
appendicitis and die upon the spot. No reasonable person would refuse
the simple precaution of taking a small drop immediately after his
entry.

I find that, classified altogether, there are seventeen reasons