We got out at a little town called Struan, and then we took a carriage
and drove across the wild moors and hills for thirteen miles till we
came to this village at the end of Loch Rannoch. The wind blew strong
and sharp, but we knew what we had to expect, and had warm clothes on.
And with the cool breeze, and remembering "Scots wha ha' wi' Wallace
bled," it made my blood tingle all the way.

We are going to stay here at least a week. We shall not try to do
everything that can be done on Scottish soil, for we shall not stalk
stags or shoot grouse; and I have told Jone that he may put on as many
Scotch bonnets and plaids as he likes, but there is one thing he is not
going to do, and that is to go bare-kneed, to which he answered, he
would never do that unless he could dip his knees into weak coffee so
that they would be the same color as his face.

There is a nice inn here with beautiful scenery all around, and the
lovely Loch Rannoch stretches away for eleven miles. Everything is just
as Scotch as it can be. Even the English people who come here put on
knickerbockers and bonnets. I have never been anywhere else where it is
considered the correct thing to dress like the natives, and I will say
here that it is very few of the natives that wear kilts. That sort of
thing seems to be given up to the fancy Highlanders.

Nearly all the talk at the inn is about, shooting and fishing.
Stag-hunting here is very different from what it is in England in more
ways than one. In the first place, stags are not hunted with horses and
hounds. In the second place, the sport is not free. A gentleman here
told Jone that if a man wanted to shoot a stag on these moors it would
cost him one rifle cartridge and six five pound notes; and when Jone
did not understand what that meant, the man went on and told him about
how the deer-stalking was carried on here. He said that some of the big
proprietors up here owned as much as ninety thousand acres of moorland,
and they let it out mostly to English people for hunting and fishing.
And if it is stag-hunting the tenant wants, the price he pays is
regulated by the number of stags he has the privilege of shooting. Each
stag he is allowed to kill costs him thirty pounds. So if he wants the
pleasure of shooting thirty stags in the season, his rent will be nine
hundred pounds. This he pays for the stag-shooting, but some kind of a
house and about ten thousand acres are thrown in, which he has a
perfect right to sit down on and rest himself on, but he can't shoot a
grouse on it unless he pays extra for that. And, what is more, if he
happens to be a bad shot, or breaks his leg and has to stay in the
house, and doesn't shoot his thirty stags, he has got to pay for them
all the same.

When Jone told me all this, I said I thought a hundred and fifty
dollars a pretty high price to pay for the right to shoot one deer. But
Jone said I didn't consider all the rest the man got. In the first
place, he had the right to get up very early in the morning, in the
gloom and drizzle, and to trudge through the slop and the heather until
he got far away from the neighborhood of any human being, and then he
could go up on some high piece of ground and take a spyglass and search
the whole country round for a stag. When he saw one way off in the
distance snuffing the morning air, or hunting for his breakfast among
the heather, he had the privilege of walking two or three miles over
the moor so as to get that stag between the wind and himself, so that
it could not scent him or hear him. Then he had the glorious right to
get his rifle all ready, and steal and creep toward that stag to cut
short his existence. He has to be as careful and as sneaky as if he was
a snake in the grass, going behind little hills and down into gullies,
and sometimes almost crawling on his stomach where he goes over an open
place, and doing everything he can to keep that stag from knowing his
end is near. Sometimes he follows his victim all day, and the sun goes
down before he has the glorious right of standing up and lodging a
bullet in its unsuspecting heart. "So you see," said Jone, "he gets a
lot for his hundred and fifty dollars."

"They do get a good deal more for their money than I thought they did,"
said I; "but I wonder if those rich sportsmen ever think that if they
would take the money that they pay for shooting thirty or forty stags
in one season, they might buy a rhinoceros, which they could set up on
a hill and shoot at every morning if they liked. A game animal like
that would last them for years, and if they ever felt like it, they
could ask their friends to help them shoot without costing them
anything."

Jone is pretty hard on sport with killing in it. He does not mind
eating meat, but he likes to have the butcher do the killing. But I
reckon he is a little too tender-hearted. But, as for me, I like sport
of some kinds, especially when you don't have your pity or your
sympathies awakened by seeing your prey enjoying life when you are
seeking to encompass his end. Of course, by that I mean fishing.

There are a good many trout in the lake, and people can hire the
privilege of fishing for them; and I begged Jone to let me go out in a
boat and fish. He was rather in favor of staying ashore and fishing in
the little river, but I didn't want to do that. I wanted to go out and
have some regular lake fishing. At last Jone agreed, provided I would
not expect him to have anything to do with the fishing. "Of course I
don't expect anything like that," said I; "and it would be a good deal
better for you to stay on shore. The landlord says a gilly will go
along to row the boat and attend to the lines and rods and all that,
and so there won't be any need for you at all, and you can stay on
shore with your book, and watch if you like."

"And suppose you tumble overboard," said Jone.

"Then you can swim out," I said, "and perhaps wade a good deal of the
way. I don't suppose we need go far from the bank."

Jone laughed, and said he was going too.

"Very well," said I; "but you have got to stay in the bow, with your
back to me, and take an interesting book with you, for it is a long
time since I have done any fishing, and I am not going to do it with
two men watching me and telling me how I ought to do it and how I
oughtn't to. One will be enough."

"And that one won't be me," said Jone, "for fishing is not one of the
branches I teach in my school."

I would have liked it better if Jone and me had gone alone, he doing
nothing but row; but the landlord wouldn't let his boat that way, and
said we must take a gilly, which, as far as I can make out, is a sort
of sporting farmhand. That is the way to do fishing in these parts.

Well, we started, and Jone sat in the front, with his back to me, and
the long-legged gilly rowed like a good fellow. When we got to a good
place to fish he stopped, and took a fishing-rod that was in pieces and
screwed them together, and fixed the line all right so that it would
run along the rod to a little wheel near the handle, and then he put on
a couple of hooks with artificial flies on them, which was so small I
couldn't imagine how the fish could see them. While he was doing all
this I got a little fidgety, because I had never fished except with a
straight pole and line with a cork to it, which would bob when the fish
bit; but this was altogether a different sort of a thing. When it was
all ready he handed me the pole, and then sat down very polite to look
at me.

Now, if he had handed me the rod, and then taken another boat and gone
home, perhaps I might have known what to do with the thing after a
while, but I must say that at that minute I didn't. I held the rod out
over the water and let the flies dangle down into it, but do what I
would, they wouldn't sink; there wasn't weight enough on them.

"You must throw your fly, madam," said the gilly, always very polite.
"Let me give it a throw for you," and then he took the rod in his hand
and gave it a whirl and a switch which sent the flies out ever so far
from the boat; then he drew it along a little, so that the flies
skipped over the top of the water.

[Illustration: "I DIDN'T SAY ANYTHING, AND TAKING THE POLE IN BOTH
HANDS I GAVE IT A WILD TWIRL OVER MY HEAD"]

I didn't say anything, and taking the pole in both hands I gave it a
wild twirl over my head, and then it flew out as if I was trying to
whip one of the leaders in a four-horse team. As I did this Jone gave a
jump that took him pretty near out of the boat, for two flies swished
just over the bridge of his nose, and so close to his eyes as he was
reading an interesting dialogue, and not thinking of fish or even of
me, that he gave a jump sideways, which, if it hadn't been for the
gilly grabbing him, would have taken him overboard. I was frightened
myself, and said to him that I had told him he ought not to come in the
boat, and it would have been a good deal better for him to have stayed
on shore.

He didn't say anything, but I noticed he turned up his collar and
pulled down his hat over his eyes and ears. The gilly said that perhaps
I had too much line out, and so he took the rod and wound up a good
deal of the line. I liked this better, because it was easier to whip
out the line and pull it in again. Of course, I would not be likely to
catch fish so much nearer the boat, but then we can't have everything
in this world. Once I thought I had a bite, and I gave the rod such a
jerk that the line flew back against me, and when I was getting ready
to throw it out again, I found that one of the little hooks had stuck
fast in my thumb. I tried to take it out with the other hand, but it
was awfully awkward to do, because the rod wobbled and kept jerking on
it. The gilly asked me if there was anything the matter with the flies,
but I didn't want him to know what had happened, and so I said, "Oh,
no," and turning my back on him I tried my best to get the hook out
without his helping me, for I didn't want him to think that the first
thing I caught was myself, after just missing my husband--he might be
afraid it would be his turn next. You cannot imagine how bothersome it
is to go fishing with a gilly to wait on you. I would rather wash
dishes with a sexton to wipe them and look for nicks on the edges.

At last--and I don't know how it happened--I did hook a fish, and the
minute I felt him I gave a jerk, and up he came. I heard the gilly say
something about playing, but I was in no mood for play, and if that
fish had been shot up out of the water by a submarine volcano it
couldn't have ascended any quicker than when I jerked it up. Then as
quick as lightning it went whirling through the air, struck the pages
of Jone's book, turning over two or three of them, and then wiggled
itself half way down Jone's neck, between his skin and his collar,
while the loose hook swung around and nipped him in his ear.

"Don't pull, madam," shouted the gilly, and it was well he did, for I
was just on the point of giving an awful jerk to get the fish loose
from Jone. Jone gave a grab at the fish, which was trying to get down
his back, and pulling him out threw him down; but by doing this he
jerked the other hook into his ear, and then a yell arose such as I
never before heard from Jone. "I told you you ought not to come in this
boat," said I; "you don't like fishing, and something is always
happening to you."

"Like fishing!" cried Jone. "I should say not," and he made up such a
comical face that even the gilly, who was very polite, had to laugh as
he went to take the hook out of his ear.

When Jone and the fish had been got off my line, Jone turned to me and
said, "Are you going to fish any more?"

"Not with you in the boat," I answered; and then he said he was glad to
hear that, and told the man he could row us ashore.

I can assure you, madam, that fishing in a rather wobbly boat with a
husband and a gilly in it, is not to my taste, and that was the end of
our sporting experiences in Scotland, but it did not end the glorious
times we had by that lake and on the moors.

We hired a little pony trap and drove up to the other end of the lake,
and not far beyond that is the beginning of Rannoch Moor, which the
books say is one of the wildest and most desolate places in all Europe.
So far as we went over the moor we found that this was truly so, and I
know that I, at least, enjoyed it ever so much more because it was so
wild and desolate. As far as we could see, the moors stretched away in
every direction, covered in most places by heather, now out of blossom,
but with great rocks standing out of the ground in some places, and
here and there patches of grass. Sometimes we could see four or five
lochs at once, some of them two or three miles long, and down through
the middle of the moor came the maddest and most harum-scarum little
river that could be imagined. It actually seemed to go out of its way
to find rocks to jump over, just as if it was a young calf, and some of
the waterfalls were beautiful. All around us was melancholy mountains,
all of them with "Ben" for their first names, except Schiehallion,
which was the best shaped of any of them, coming up to a point and
standing by itself, which was what I used to think mountains always
did; but now I know they run into each other so that you can hardly
tell where one ends and the other begins.

For three or four days we went out on these moors, sometimes when the
sun was shining, and sometimes when there was a heavy rain and the wind
blew gales, and I think I liked this last kind of weather the best, for
it gave me an idea of lonely desolation which I never had in any part
of the world I have ever been in before. There is often not a house to
be seen, not even a crofter's hut, and we seldom met anybody. Sometimes
I wandered off by myself behind a hillock or rocks where I could not
even see Jone, and then I used to try to imagine how Eve would have
felt if she had early become a widow, and to put myself in her place.
There was always clouds in the sky, sometimes dark and heavy ones
coming down to the very peaks of the mountains, and not a tree was to
be seen, except a few rowan trees or bushes close to the river. But by
the side of Lock Rannoch, on our way back to the village, we passed
along the edge of a fine old forest called the "Black Woods of
Rannoch." There are only three of these ancient forests left in
Scotland, and some of the trees in this one are said to be eight
hundred years old.

[Illustration: Pomona drinking it in]

The last time we was out on the Rannoch Moor there was such a savage
and driving wind, and the rain came down in such torrents, that my
mackintosh was blown nearly off of me, and I was wet from my head to my
heels. But I would have stayed out hours longer if Jone had been
willing, and I never felt so sorry to leave these Grampian Hills, where
I would have been glad to have had my father feed his flocks, and where
I might have wandered away my childhood, barefooted over the heather,
singing Scotch songs and drinking in deep draughts of the pure mountain
air, instead of--but no matter.

To-morrow we leave the Highlands, but as we go to follow the shallop of
the "Lady of the Lake," I should not repine.




_Letter Number Twenty-three_


[Illustration]

OBAN, SCOTLAND

It would seem to be the easiest thing in the world, when looking on the
map, to go across the country from Loch Rannoch over to Katrine and all
those celebrated parts, but we found we could not go that way, and so
we went back to Edinburgh and made a fresh start. We stopped one night
at the Royal Hotel, and there we found a letter from Mr. Poplington. We
had left him at Buxton, and he said he was not going to Scotland this
season, but would try to see us in London before we sailed.

He is a good man, and he wrote this letter on purpose to tell me that
he had had a letter from his friend, the clergyman in Somersetshire,
who had forbidden the young woman whose wash my tricycle had run into
to marry her lover because he was a Radical. This letter was in answer
to one Mr. Poplington wrote to him, in which he gave the minister my
reasons for thinking that the best way to convert the young man from
Radicalism was to let him marry the young woman, who would be sure to
bring him around to her way of thinking, whatever that might be.

I didn't care about the Radicalism. All I wanted was to get the two
married, and then it would not make the least difference to me what
their politics might be; if they lived properly and was sober and
industrious and kept on loving each other, I didn't believe it would
make much difference to them. It was a long letter that the clergyman
wrote, but the point of it was, that he had concluded to tell the young
woman that she might marry the fellow if she liked, and that she must
do her best to make him a good Conservative, which, of course, she
promised to do. When I read this I clapped my hands, for who could have
suspected that I should have the good luck to come to this country to
spend the summer and make two matches before I left it!

When we left Edinburgh to gradually wend our way to this place, which
is on the west coast of Scotland, the first town we stopped at was
Stirling, where the Scotch kings used to live. Of course we went to the
castle, which stands on the rocks high above the town; but before we
started to go there Jone inquired if the place was a ruin or not, and
when he was told it was not, and that soldiers lived there, he said it
was all right, and we went. He now says he must positively decline to
visit any more houses out of repair. He is tired of them; and since he
has got over his rheumatism he feels less like visiting ruins than he
ever did. I tell him the ruins are not any more likely to be damp than
a good many of the houses that people live in; but this didn't shake
him, and I suppose if we come to any more vine-covered and shattered
remnants of antiquity I shall be obliged to go over them by myself.

The castle is a great place, which I wouldn't have missed for the
world; but the spot that stirred my soul the most was in a little
garden, as high in the air as the top of a steeple, where we could look
out over the battlefield of Bannockburn. Besides this, we could see the
mountains of Ben-Lomond, Ben-Venue, Ben-A'an, Benledi, and ever so much
Scottish landscape spreading out for miles upon miles. There is a
little hole in the wall here called the Ladies' Look-Out, where the
ladies of the court could sit and see what was going on in the country
below without being seen themselves, but I stood up and took in
everything over the top of the wall.

I don't know whether I told you that the mountains of Scotland are
"Bens," and the mouths of rivers are "abers," and islands are
"inches." Walking about the streets of Stirling, and I didn't have time
to see half as much as I wanted to, I came to the shop of a "flesher."
I didn't know what it was until I looked into the window and saw that
it was a butcher shop.

I like a language just about as foreign as the Scotch is. There are a
good many words in it that people not Scotch don't understand, but that
gives a person the feeling that she is travelling abroad, which I want
to have when I am abroad. Then, on the other hand, there are not enough
of them to hinder a traveller from making herself understood. So it is
natural for me to like it ever so much better than French, in which,
when I am in it, I simply sink to the bottom if no helping hand is held
out to me.

I had some trouble with Jone that night at the hotel, because he had a
novel which he had been reading for I don't know how long, and which he
said he wanted to get through with before he began anything else. But
now I told him he was going to enter on the wonderful country of the
"Lady of the Lake," and that he ought to give up everything else and
read that book, because if he didn't go there with his mind prepared
the scenery would not sink into his soul as it ought to. He was of the
opinion that when my romantic feeling got on top of the scenery it
would be likely to sink into his soul as deep as he cared to have it,
without any preparation, but that sort of talk wouldn't do for me. I
didn't want to be gliding o'er the smooth waters of Loch Katrine, and
have him asking me who the girl was who rowed her shallop to the silver
strand, and the end of it was that I made him sit up until a quarter of
two o'clock in the morning while I read the "Lady of the Lake" to him.
I had read it before and he had not, but I hadn't got a quarter through
before he was just as willing to listen as I was to read. And when I
got through I was in such a glow that Jone said he believed that all
the blood in my veins had turned to hot Scotch.

I didn't pay any attention to this, and after going to the window and
looking out at the Gaelic moon, which was about half full and rolling
along among the clouds, I turned to Jone and said, "Jone, let's sing
'Scots wha ha',' before we go to bed."

"If we do roar out that thing," said Jone, "they will put us out on the
curbstone to spend the rest of the night."

"Let's whisper it, then," said I; "the spirit of it is all I want. I
don't care for the loudness."

"I'd be willing to do that," said Jone, "if I knew the tune and a few
of the words."

"Oh, bother!" said I; and when I got into bed I drew the clothes over
my head and sang that brave song all to myself. Doing it that way the
words and tune didn't matter at all, but I felt the spirit of it, and
that was all I wanted, and then I went to sleep.

The next morning we went to Callander by train, and there we took a
coach for Trossachs. It is hardly worth while to say we went on top,
because the coaches here haven't any inside to them, except a hole
where they put the baggage. We drove along a beautiful road with
mountains and vales and streams, and the driver told us the name of
everything that had a name, which he couldn't help very well, being
asked so constant by me. But I didn't feel altogether satisfied, for we
hadn't come to anything quotable, and I didn't like to have Jone sit
too long without something happening to stir up some of the "Lady of
the Lake" which I had pumped into his mind the day before, and so keep
it fresh.

Before long, however, the driver pointed out the ford of Coilantogle.
The instant he said this I half jumped up, and, seizing Jone by the
arm, I cried, "Don't you remember? This is the place where the Knight
of Snowdoun, James Fitz-James, fought Roderick Dhu!" And then without
caring who else heard me, I burst out with:

    "'His back against a rock he bore,
      And firmly placed his foot before:
      "Come one, come all! This rock shall fly
      From its firm base as soon as I."'"

"No, madam," said the driver, politely touching his hat, "that was a
mile farther on. This place is:

    "'And here his course the chieftain staid,
      Threw down his target and his plaid.'"

"You are right," said I; and then I began again:

    "'Then each at once his falchion drew,
      Each on the ground his scabbard threw,
      Each look'd to sun, and stream, and plain,
      As what they ne'er might see again;
      Then foot, and point, and eye opposed,
      In dubious strife they darkly closed.'"

I didn't repeat any more of the poem, though everybody was listening
quite respectful without thinking of laughing, and as for Jone, I could
see by the way he sat and looked about him that his tinder had caught
my spark; but I knew that the thing for me to do here was not to give
out but take in, and so, to speak in figures, I drank in the whole of
Lake Vannachar, as we drove along its lovely marge until we came to the
other end, and the driver said we would now go over the Brigg of Turk.
At this up I jumped and said:

    "'And when the Brigg of Turk was won,
      The headmost horseman rode alone.'"

I had sense enough not to quote the next two lines, because when I had
read them to Jone he said that it was a shame to use a horse that way.

We now came to Loch Achray, at the other end of which is the
Trossachs, where we stopped for the night, and when the driver told me
the mountain we saw before us was Ben-Venue, I repeated the lines:

    "'The hunter marked that mountain high,
      The lone lake's western boundary,
      And deem'd the stag must turn to bay,
      Where that huge rampart barr'd the way.'"

At last we reached the Trossachs Hotel, which stands near the wild
ravines filled with bristling woods where the stag was lost, with the
lovely lake in front and Ben-Venue towering up on the other side. I was
so excited I could scarcely eat, and no wonder, because for the greater
part of the day I had breathed nothing but the spirit of Scott's
poetry. I forgot to say that from the time we left Callander until we
got to the hotel the rain poured down steadily, but that didn't make
any difference to me. A human being soaked with the "Lady of the Lake"
is rain-proof.




_Letter Number Twenty-four_


EDINBURGH

I was sorry to stop my last letter right in the middle of the "Lady of
the Lake" country, but I couldn't get it all in, and the fact is, I
can't get all I want to say in any kind of a letter. The things I have
seen and want to write about are crowded together like the Scottish
mountains.

On the day after we got to Trossachs Hotel, and I don't know any place
I would rather spend weeks at than there, Jone and I walked through the
"darksome glen" where the stag,

    "Soon lost to hound and hunter's ken,
     In the deep Trossachs' wildest nook
     His solitary refuge took."

And then we came out on the far-famed Loch Katrine. There was a little
steamboat there to take passengers to the other end, where a coach was
waiting, but it wasn't time for that to start, and we wandered on the
banks of that song-gilded piece of water. It didn't lie before us like
"one burnished sheet of living gold," as it appeared to James
Fitz-James but my soul could supply the sunset if I chose. There, too,
was the island of the fair Ellen, and beneath our very feet was the
"silver strand" to which she rowed her shallop. I am sorry to say there
isn't so much of the silver strand as there used to be, because, in
this world, as I have read, and as I have seen, the spirit of
realistics is always crowding and trampling on the toes of the
romantics, and the people of Glasgow have actually laid water-pipes
from their town to this lovely lake, and now they turn the faucets in
their back kitchens and out spouts the tide which kissed

    "With whispering sound and slow
     The beach of pebbles bright as snow."

This wouldn't have been so bad, because the lake has enough and to
spare of its limpid wave; but in order to make their water-works the
Glasgow people built a dam, and that has raised the lake a good deal
higher, so that it overflows ever so much of the silver strand. But I
can pick out the real from a scene like that as I can pick out and
throw away the seeds of an orange, and gazing o'er that enchanted scene
I felt like the Knight of Snowdoun himself, when he first beheld the
lake and said:

    "How blithely might the bugle horn
     Chide, on the lake, the lingering morn!"

and then I went on with the lines until I came to

    "Blithe were it then to wander here!
     But now--beshrew yon nimble deer"--

"You'd better beshrew that steamboat bell," said Jone, and away we went
and just caught the boat. Realistics come in very well sometimes when
they take the form of legs.

The steamboat took us over nearly the whole of Lake Katrine, and I must
say that I was so busy fitting verses to scenery that I don't remember
whether it rained or the sun shone. When we left the boat we took a
coach to Inversnaid on Loch Lomond, and, as we rode along, it made my
heart almost sink to feel that I had to leave my poetry behind me, for
I didn't know any that suited this region. But when we got in sight of
Loch Lomond a Scotch girl who was on the seat behind me, and had
several friends with her, began to sing a song about Lomond, of which I
only remember, "You take the high road and I'll take the low road, and
I'll get to Scotland afore you."

I am sure I must have Scotch blood in me, for when I heard that song it
wound up my feelings to such a pitch that I believe if that girl had
been near enough I should have given her a hug and a kiss. As for Jone,
he seemed to be nearly as much touched as I was, though not in the same
way, of course.

We took a boat on Loch Lomond to Ardlui, another little town, and then
we drove nine miles to the railroad. This was through a wild and solemn
valley, and by the side of a rushing river, full of waterfalls and deep
and diresome pools. When we reached the railroad we found a train
waiting, and we took it and went to Oban, which we reached about six
o'clock. Even this railroad trip was delightful, for we went by the
great Lake Awe, with another rushing river and mountains and black
precipices. We had a carriage all to ourselves until an old lady got in
at a station, and she hadn't been sitting in her corner more than ten
minutes before she turned to me and said:

"You haven't any lakes like this in your country, I suppose."

Now I must say that, in the heated condition I had been in ever since I
came into Scotland, a speech like that was like a squirt of cold water
into a thing full of steam. For a couple of seconds my boiling stopped,
but my fires was just as blazing as ever, and I felt as if I could turn
them on that old woman and shrivel her up for plastering her
comparisons on me at such a time.

"Of course, we haven't anything just like this," I said, "but it takes
all sorts of scenery to make up a world."

"That's very true, isn't it?" said she. "But, really, one couldn't
expect in America such a lake as that, such mountains, such grandeur!"

Now I made up my mind if she was going to keep up this sort of thing
Jone and me would change carriages when we stopped at the next station,
for comparisons are very different from poetry, and if you try to mix
them with scenery you make a mess that is not fit for a Christian. But
I thought first I would give her a word back:

"I have seen to-day," I said, "the loveliest scenery I ever met with;
but we've got grand caГ±ons in America where you could put the whole of
that scenery without crowding, and where it wouldn't be much noticed by
spectators, so busy would they be gazing at the surrounding wonders."

"Fancy!" said she.

"I don't want to say anything," said I, "against what I have seen
to-day, and I don't want to think of anything else while I am looking
at it; but this I will say, that landscape with Scott is very different
from landscape without him."

"That is very true, isn't it?" said she; and then she stopped making
comparisons, and I looked out of the window.

Oban is a very pretty place on the coast, but we never should have gone
there if it had not been the place to start from for Staffa and Iona.
When I was only a girl I saw pictures of Fingal's Cave, and I have read
a good deal about it since, and it is one of the spots in the world
that I have been longing to see, but I feel like crying when I tell
you, madam, that the next morning there was such a storm that the boat
for Staffa didn't even start; and as the people told us that the storm
would most likely last two or three days, and that the sea for a few
days more would be so rough that Staffa would be out of the question,
we had to give it up, and I was obliged to fall back from the reality
to my imagination. Jone tried to comfort me by telling me that he would
be willing to bet ten to one that my fancy would soar a mile above the
real thing, and that perhaps it was very well I didn't see old Fingal's
Cave and so be disappointed.

"Perhaps it is a good thing," said I, "that you didn't go, and that you
didn't get so seasick that you would be ready to renounce your
country's flag and embrace Mormonism if such things would make you feel
better." But that is the only thing that is good about it, and I have a
cloud on my recollection which shall never be lifted until Corinne is
old enough to travel and we come here with her.

But although the storm was so bad, it was not bad enough to keep us
from making our water trip to Glasgow, for the boat we took did not
have to go out to sea. It was a wonderfully beautiful passage we made
among the islands and along the coast, with the great mountains on the
mainland standing up above everything else. After a while we got to the
Crinan Canal, which is in reality a short cut across the field. It is
nine miles long and not much wider than a good-sized ditch, but it
saves more than a hundred miles of travel around an island. We was on a
sort of a toy steamboat which went its way through the fields and
bushes and grass so close we could touch them; and as there was eleven
locks where the boat had to stop, we got out two or three times and
walked along the banks to the next lock. That being the kind of a ride
Jone likes, he blessed Buxton. At the other end of the canal we took a
bigger steamboat which carried us to Glasgow.

In the morning it hailed, which afterward turned to rain, but in the
afternoon there was only showers now and then, so that we spent most of
the time on deck. On this boat we met a very nice Englishman and his
wife, and when they had heard us speak to each other they asked us if
we had ever been in this part of the world before, and when we said we
hadn't they told us about the places we passed. If we had been an
English couple who had never been there before they wouldn't have said
a word to us.

As we got near the Clyde the gentleman began to talk about
ship-building, and pretty soon I saw in his face plain symptoms that he
was going to have an attack of comparison making. I have seen so much
of this disorder that I can nearly always tell when it is coming on a
person. In about a minute the disease broke out on him, and he began to
talk about the differences between American and English ships. He told
Jone and me about a steamship that was built out in San Francisco which
shook three thousand bolts out of herself on her first voyage. It
seemed to me that that was a good deal like a codfish shaking his
bones out through swimming too fast. I couldn't help thinking that that
steamship must have had a lot of bolts so as to have enough left to
keep her from scattering herself over the bottom of the ocean.

I expected Jone to say something in behalf of his country's ships, but
he didn't seem to pay much attention to the boat story, so I took up
the cudgels myself, and I said to the gentleman that all nations, no
matter how good they might be at ship-building, sometimes made
mistakes, and then to make a good impression on him I whanged him over
the head with the "Great Eastern," and asked him if there ever was a
vessel that was a greater failure than that.

He said, "Yes, yes, the 'Great Eastern' was not a success," and then he
stopped talking about ships.

When we got fairly into the Clyde and near Glasgow the scene was
wonderful. It was nearly night, and the great fires of the factories
lit up the sky, and we saw on the stocks a great ship being built.

We stayed in Glasgow one day, and Jone was delighted with it, because
he said it was like an American city. Now, on principle, I like
American cities, but I didn't come to Scotland to see them; and the
greatest pleasure I had in Glasgow was standing with a tumbler of water
in my hand, repeating to myself as much of the "Lady of the Lake" as I
could remember.




_Letter Number Twenty-five_


LONDON

Here we are in this wonderful town, where, if you can't see everything
you want to see, you can generally see a sample of it, even if your fad
happens to be the ancientnesses of Egypt. We are at the Babylon Hotel,
where we shall stay until it is time to start for Southampton, where we
shall take the steamer for home. What we are going to do between here
and Southampton I don't know yet; but I do know that Jone is all on
fire with joy because he thinks his journeys are nearly over, and I am
chilled with grief when I think that my journeys are nearly over.

We left Edinburgh on the train called the "Flying Scotsman," and it
deserved its name. I suppose that in the days of Wallace and Bruce and
Rob Roy the Scots must often have skipped along in a lively way; but I
am sure if any of them had ever invaded England at the rate we went
into it, the British lion would soon have been living on thistles
instead of roses.

The speed of this train was sometimes a mile a minute, I think; and I
am sure I was never on any railroad in America where I was given a
shorter time to get out for something to eat than we had at York. Jone
and I are generally pretty quick about such things, but we had barely
time to get back to our carriage before that "Flying Scotsman" went off
like a streak of lightning.

On the way we saw a part of York Minster, and had a splendid, view of
Durham Cathedral, standing high in the unreachable--that is, as far as
I was concerned. Peterborough Cathedral we also saw the outside of, and
I felt like a boy looking in at a confectioner's window with no money
to buy anything. It wasn't money that I wanted; it was time, and we had
very little of that left.

The next day, after we reached London, I set out to attend to a piece
of business that I didn't want Jone to know anything about. My business
was to look up my family pedigree. It seemed to me that it would be a
shame if I went away from the home of my ancestors without knowing
something about those ancestors and about the links that connected me
with them. So I determined to see what I could do in the way of making
up a family tree.

By good luck, Jone had some business to attend to about money and rooms
on the steamer, and so forth, and so I could start out by myself
without his even asking me where I was going. Now, of course, it would
be a natural thing for a person to go and seek out his ancestors in the
ancient village from which they sprang, and to read their names on
the tombstones in the venerable little church, but as I didn't know
where this village was, of course I couldn't go to it. But in London is
the place where you can find out how to find out such things.

[Illustration: "A PERSON WHO WAS A FAMILY-TREE-MAN"]

As far back as when we was in Chedcombe I had had a good deal of talk
with Miss Pondar about ancestors and families. I told her that my
forefathers came from this country, which I was very sure of, judging
from my feelings; but as I couldn't tell her any particulars, I didn't
go into the matter very deep. But I did say there was a good many
points that I would like to set straight, and asked her if she knew
where I could find out something about English family trees. She said
she had heard there was a big heraldry office in London, but if I
didn't want to go there, she knew of a person who was a
family-tree-man. He had an office in London, and his business was to go
around and tend to trees of that kind which had been neglected, and to
get them into shape and good condition. She gave me his address, and I
had kept the thing quiet in my mind until now.

I found the family-tree-man, whose name was Brandish, in a small room
not too clean, over a shop not far from St. Paul's Churchyard. He had
another business, which related to patent poison for flies, and at
first he thought I had come to see him about that, but when he found
out I wanted to ask him about my family tree his face brightened up.

When I told Mr. Brandish my business the first thing he asked me was my
family name. Of course I had expected this, and I had thought a great
deal about the answer I ought to give. In the first place, I didn't
want to have anything to do with my father's name. I never had anything
much to do with him, because he died when I was a little baby, and his
name had nothing high-toned about it, and it seemed to me to belong to
that kind of a family that you would be better satisfied with the less
you looked up its beginnings; but my mother's family was a different
thing. Nobody could know her without feeling that she had sprung from
good roots. It might have been from the stump of a tree that had been
cut down, but the roots must have been of no common kind to send up
such a shoot as she was. It was from her that I got my longings for the
romantic.

She used to tell me a good deal about her father, who must have been a
wonderful man in many ways. What she told me was not like a sketch of
his life, which I wish it had been, but mostly anecdotes of what he
said and did. So it was my mother's ancestral tree I determined to
find, and without saying whether it was on my mother's or father's side
I was searching for ancestors, I told Mr. Brandish that Dork was the
family name.

"Dork," said he; "a rather uncommon name, isn't it? Was your father
the eldest son of a family of that name?"

Now I was hoping he wouldn't say anything about my father.

"No, sir," said I; "it isn't that line that I am looking up. It is my
mother's. Her name was Dork before she was married."

"Really! Now I see," said he, "you have the paternal line all correct,
and you want to look up the line on the other side. That is very
common; it is so seldom that one knows the line of ancestors on one's
maternal side. Dork, then, was the name of your maternal grandfather."

It struck me that a maternal grandfather must be a grandmother, but I
didn't say so.

"Can you tell me," said he, "whether it was he who emigrated from this
country to America, or whether it was his father or his grandfather?"

Now I hadn't said anything about the United States, for I had learned
there was no use in wasting breath telling English people I had come
from America, so I wasn't surprised at his question, but I couldn't
answer it.

"I can't say much about that," I said, "until I have found out
something about the English branches of the family."

"Very good," said he. "We will look over the records," and he took down
a big book and turned to the letter D. He ran his finger down two or
three pages, and then he began to shake his head.

"Dork?" said he. "There doesn't seem to be any Dork, but here is
Dorkminster. Now if that was your family name we'd have it all here. No
doubt you know all about that family. It's a grand old family, isn't
it? Isn't it possible that your grandfather or one of his ancestors may
have dropped part of the name when he changed his residence to
America?"

Now I began to think hard; there was some reason in what the
family-tree-man said. I knew very well that the same family name was
often different in different countries, changes being made to suit
climates and people.

"Minster has a religious meaning, hasn't it?" said I.

"Yes, madam," said he; "it relates to cathedrals and that sort of
thing."

Now, so far as I could remember, none of the things my mother had ever
told me about her father was in any ways related to religion. They was
mostly about horses; and although there is really no reason for the
disconnection between horses and religion, especially when you consider
the hymns with heavenly chariots in them must have had horses, it
didn't seem to me that my grandfather could have made it a point of
being religious, and perhaps he mightn't have cared for the cathedral
part of his name, and so might have dropped it for convenience in
signing, probably being generally in a hurry, judging from what my
mother had told me. I said as much to Mr. Brandish, and he answered
that he thought it was likely enough, and that that sort of thing was
often done.

"Now, then," said he, "let us look into the Dorkminster line and trace
out your connection with that. From what place did your ancestors
come?"

It seemed to me that he was asking me a good deal more than he was
telling me, and I said to him: "That is what I want to find out. What
is the family home of the Dorkminsters?"

"Oh, they were a great Hampshire family," said he. "For five hundred
years they lived on their estates in Hampshire. The first of the name
was Sir William Dorkminster, who came over with the Conqueror, and most
likely was given those estates for his services. Then we go on until we
come to the Duke of Dorkminster, who built a castle, and whose brother
Henry was made bishop and founded an abbey, which I am sorry to say
doesn't now exist, being totally destroyed by Oliver Cromwell."

You cannot imagine how my blood leaped and surged within me as I
listened to those words. William the Conqueror! An ancestral abbey! A
duke! "Is the family castle still standing?" said I.

"It fell into ruins," said he, "during the reign of Charles I., and
even its site is now uncertain, the park having been devoted to
agricultural purposes. The fourth Duke of Dorkminster was to have
commanded one of the ships which destroyed the Spanish Armada, but was
prevented by a mortal fever which cut him off in his prime; he died
without issue, and the estates passed to the Culverhams of Wilts."

"Did that cut off the line?" said I, very quick.

"Oh, no," said the family-tree man, "the line went on. One of the
duke's younger sisters must have married a man on condition that he
took the old family name, which is often done, and her descendants must
have emigrated somewhere, for the name no longer appears in Hampshire;
but probably not to America, for that was rather early for English
emigration."

"Do you suppose," said I, "that they went to Scotland?"

"Very likely," said he, after thinking a minute; "that would be
probable enough. Have you reason to suppose that there was a Scotch
branch in your family?"

"Yes," said I, for it would have been positively wrong in me to say
that the feelings that I had for the Scotch hadn't any meaning at all.

"Now then," said Mr. Brandish, "there you are, madam. There is a line
all the way down from the Conqueror to the end of the sixteenth
century, scarcely one man's lifetime before the Pilgrims landed on
Plymouth Rock."

I now began to calculate in my mind. I was thirty years old; my mother,
most likely, was about as old when I was born; that made sixty years.
Then my grandfather might have been forty when my mother was born, and
there was a century. As for my great-grandfather and his parents, I
didn't know anything about them. Of course, there must have been such
persons, but I didn't know where they came from or where they went to.

"I can go back a century," said I, "but that doesn't begin to meet the
end of the line you have marked out. There's a gap of about two hundred
years."

"Oh, I don't think I would mind that," said Mr. Brandish. "Gaps of that
kind are constantly occurring in family trees. In fact, if we was to
allow gaps of a century or so to interfere with the working out of
family lines, it would cut off a great many noble ancestries from
families of high position, especially in the colonies and abroad. I beg
you not to pay any attention to that, madam."

My nerves was tingling with the thought of the Spanish Armada, and
perhaps Bannockburn (which then made me wish I had known all this
before I went to Stirling, but which battle, now as I write, I know
must have been fought a long time before any of the Dorks went to
Scotland), and I expect my eyes flashed with family pride, for do what
I would I couldn't sit calm and listen to what I was hearing. But,
after all, that two hundred years did weigh upon my mind. "If you make
a family tree for me," said I, "you will have to cut off the trunk and
begin again somewhere up in the air."

"Oh, no," said he, "we don't do that. We arrange the branches so that
they overlap each other, and the dotted lines which indicate the
missing portions are not noticed. Then, after further investigation and
more information, the dots can be run together and the tree made
complete and perfect."

Of course, I had nothing more to say, and he promised to send me the
tree the next morning, though, of course, requesting me to pay him in
advance, which was the rule of the office, and you would be amazed,
madam, if you knew how much that tree cost. I got it the next morning,
but I haven't shown it to Jone yet. I am proud that I own it, and I
have thrills through me whenever my mind goes back to its Norman roots;
but I am bound to say that family trees sometimes throw a good deal of
shade over their owners, especially when they have gaps in them, which
seems contrary to nature, but is true to fact.




_Letter Number Twenty-six_


SOUTHWESTERN HOTEL, SOUTHAMPTON

To-morrow our steamer sails, and this is the last letter I write on
English soil; and although I haven't done half that I wanted to, there
are ever so many things I have done that I can't write you about.

I had seen so few cathedrals that on the way down here I was bound to
see at least one good one, and so we stopped at Winchester. It was
while walking under the arches of that venerable pile that the thought
suddenly came to me that we were now in Hampshire, and that, perhaps,
in this cathedral might be some of the tombs of my ancestors. Without
saying what I was after I began at one of the doors, and I went clean
around that enormous church, and read every tablet in the walls and on
the floor.

Once I had a shock. There was a good many small tombs with roofs over
them, and statues of people buried within, lying on top of the tombs,
and some of them had their faces and clothes colored so as to make them
look almost as natural as life. They was mostly bishops, and had been
lying there for centuries. While looking at these I came to a tomb
with an opening low down on the side of it, and behind some iron bars
there lay a stone figure that made me fairly jump. He was on his back
with hardly any clothes on, and was actually nothing but skin and
bones. His mouth was open, as if he was gasping for his last breath. I
never saw such an awful sight, and as I looked at the thing my blood
began to run cold, and then it froze. The freezing was because I
suddenly thought to myself that this might be a Dorkminster, and that
that horrible object was my ancestor. I was actually afraid to look at
the inscription on the tombstone for fear that this was so, for if it
was, I knew that whenever I should think of my family tree this bag of
bones would be climbing up the trunk, or sitting on one of the
branches. But I must know the truth, and trembling so that I could
scarcely read, I stooped down to look at the inscription and find out
who that dreadful figure had been. It was not a Dorkminster, and my
spirits rose.