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Updated: June 19, 2025


Thus I went on, taking my swing in such vain courses as were accounted harmless recreations, entertaining my companions and familiar acquaintance with pleasant discourses in our conversations, by the mere force of mother-wit and natural parts, without the help of school cultivation; and was accounted good company too.

He left in the morning for Clashbrae, where he bought some smaller lots from the farmer there, who was a local dealer. A word as to M'Donald: He was a stout-made middle-sized man, and spoke so fast over the "bowl" that no one could follow him. He had a good deal of mother-wit; and his great ambition was to be the owner of large droves of cattle.

The king, although an unscrupulous, self-seeking despot and the coarsest of voluptuaries, was at least a man of genius. He had also too much shrewd mother-wit to pursue such schemes as experience had shown to possess no reality. The talisman "Espoir," emblazoned on his shield, had led him to so much that it was natural for him at times to think all things possible.

A good handicraftsman can get on very well without genius, but he will fare badly without a reasonable share of that which is a more useful possession for workaday life, namely, mother-wit; and he will be all the better for a real knowledge, however limited, of the ordinary laws of nature, and especially of those which apply to his own business.

'If yo' mean me, mother, I'll noane deny that in a thing or two I may be more knowledgeable than Coulson. I've had a deal o' time on my hands i' my youth, and I'd good schooling as long as father lived. 'Lad! it's not schooling, nor knowledge, nor book-learning as carries a man through t' world. It's mother-wit. And it's noane schooling, nor knowledge, nor book-learning as takes a young woman.

"It is a long time," Mime ventures timidly, "since I left my native place; a long time since I departed from the bosom of earth, my mother; I once saw the gleam of Wotan's eye as he looked into the cave; my mother-wit dwindles before him...." But the wee fellow has no mean conceit of his wisdom, and is really not as uneasy as might be expected of one in his position.

The man himself was a gold watch encased in a rough exterior, a noble heart in a rude setting. His horny hands were hardened by toil, but he had a clever head on his shoulders; he was well endowed with mother-wit, quick at repartee, merciless in his satire toward the haughty and overbearing, cool and good-humoured in the presence of danger, in short, a genuine Szekler, heart and soul.

Once or twice, it is true, her native readiness suggested a retort, or an argument that raised a laugh, and gave her a momentary advantage; but these little sallies, the offspring of mother-wit, served the better to conceal her real feelings, and to give to the triumph of the other party a more natural air than it might have possessed without them.

Hence the song: Shall I laugh or fall to wailing That the most of men so dumb are, Ever borrowed thoughts retailing, And in mother-wit so mum are? No: thanksgiving heavenward rise That fools so crowd this generation, Else the wisdom of the wise Would be lost to observation.

His mother-wit taught him that he must not, in such uncertain times, be too hasty in asking information of any one; and when, after a long day's journey, night surprised him near a little village, he began to be dubious and anxious concerning the issue of his journey.

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