In the highlands of high finance
Edward Henry Harriman, in the Scottish Highlands, stands with arms and sword raised next to a diamond-shaped rock labeled “Flim-Flam Finance” balancing on a pointed base. Harriman is confronting Theodore Roosevelt and his band of Scotsmen, William H. Taft, Charles J. Bonaparte, Frank B. Kellogg, James Rudolph Garfield, and Milton Dwight Purdy. Caption: Fitzjames Harriman (to Teddy Dhu) — Come one, come all! This rock shall fly from its firm base as soon as I!
Comments and Context
At one time in the United States, the works of Sir Walter Scott were extremely popular; his books ubiquitous in homes and libraries. Many Scots today are virtually reverential about Scott’s stirring, dramatic, and nationalistic poetry.
One of Scott’s most famous epic poems was Lady Of the Lake (1810), about ancient Highland conflicts in the form of six cantos, each representing a separate day, and falling into three concurrent plots — romantic, conflict, and stirring nationalism. The American freed slave Frederick Douglass took his last name from one of the characters.