iculate, and I suspect
that in the depths of his heart he believes that there are tongues in
trees and books in the running brooks, just as he is convinced that
there is good in everything.

He is a ripe and whimsical scholar, and his talk, even in infirm old
age, is marked by a Doric virility which has rendered his companionship
for these five days as stimulating as the moorland air. How few men have
this gift of discharging intellectual invigoration. Indeed, I only
know old McQuhatty who has it, and a sportive Providence has carefully
excluded mankind from its benefits for half a century. Stay: it once
fostered a genius who arose in Campsie, and sent him strung with tonic
to Edinburgh to become a poet. But the poor lad drank whisky for two
years without cessation, so that he died, and McQuhatty's inspiration
was wasted. What intellectual stimulus can he afford, for instance, to
Sandy McGrath, an elder of the kirk whom I saw coming up the brae on
Sunday? An old ram stood in the path and, as obstinate as he, refused
to budge. And as they looked dourly at each other, I wondered if the ram
were dressed in black broadcloth and McGrath in wool, whether either of
their mothers would notice the metamorphosis. Yet my host declares that
I see with the eyes of a Southron; that the Scotch peasant when he is
not drunk is intellectual, and that there is no occasion on which he is
not ready for theological disputation.

"But I dinna mind telling you," he added, "that I'd as lief talk with my
rowan tree. It does nae blaze into a conflagration at a comfortable wee
bit of false doctrine."

I should love to stay all the summer with my old friend, It seems that
only from such a remote solitude can one view things mundane in the
right perspective, and in their true proportion. One would see how
important or unimportant portent in the cosmos was the agricultural
ant's dream of three millimetres and an aphis compared with the
aspirations of the English labourer. One would justly focus the South
African millionaire, Sandy McGrath and the ram, and bring them to their
real lowest common denominator. One would even be able to gauge the
value of a History of Renaissance Morals. The benefits I should derive
from a long sojourn are incalculable, but my new responsibilities call
me back to London and its refracting and distorting atmosphere. If I had
dwelt here for fifty years I should have perceived that Carlotta was
but a speck in the whirlwin