The Gilded Chair by Melville Davisson Post

The Highland Gathering is a sort of northern durbar, and of an antiquity equaling those of India.

The custom of the Scottish clans to meet for a day of games, piping and parade, had its origin anterior to the running of the Gaelic memory. A durbar it may be called, and yet a contrast in that word cannot be laid here alongside the gorgeous pageant of Delhi. The word may stand, albeit, in either case equally descriptive. Both are Gatherings. The distinction lies not in the essential and moving motive of the function, but in the diametric differences of the races. The Orient contrasted against the North. The rajah in his cape of diamonds, attended by his retinue, stripped of: his Eastern splendor, is but a chief accompanied by his "tail. " The roll of skin drums is a music of no greater mystery to the stranger than the whine of pipes. The fakirs, the jugglers of India, disclose the effeminate nature of the East, while the games of the Highland disclose equally the hardy nature of the North.