“Sit there, clod-pate!” cried he; “for let me sit wherever I will, that will still be the upper end, and the place of worship to thee.”1
ATTRIBUTION:
Don Quixote. Part ii. Chap. xxxi.
Note 1. Sit thee down, chaff-threshing churl! for let me sit where I will, that is the upper end to thee.—Jarvis’s translation.
This is generally placed in the mouth of Macgregor: “Where Macgregor sits, there is the head of the table.” Emerson quotes it, in his “American Scholar,” as the saying of Macdonald, and Theodore Parker as the saying of the Highlander. [back]
