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.
