when we
people it with familiar characters from our favourite novels. Even on a
first journey we feel ourselves among old friends. Thus to read Romola
in Florence, and Les Miserables in Paris, and Lorna Doone on Exmoor, and
The Heart of Midlothian in Edinburgh, and David Balfour in the Pass of
Glencoe, and The Pirate in the Shetland Isles, is to get a new sense of
the possibilities of life. All these things have I done with much inward
contentment; and other things of like quality have I yet in store; as,
for example, the conjunction of The Bonnie Brier-Bush with Drumtochty,
and The Little Minister with Thrums, and The Raiders with Galloway.
But I never expect to pass pleasanter days than those I spent with A
Princess of Thule among the Hebrides.

For then, to begin with, I was young; which is an unearned increment of
delight sure to be confiscated by the envious years and never regained.
But even youth itself was not to be compared with the exquisite felicity
of being deeply and desperately in love with Sheila, the clear-eyed
heroine of that charming book. In this innocent passion my gray-haired
comrades, Howard Crosby, the Chancellor of the University of New York,
and my father, an ex-Moderator of the Presbyterian General Assembly,
were ardent but generous rivals.

How great is the joy and how fascinating the pursuit of such an ethereal
affection! It enlarges the heart without embarrassing the conscience. It
is a cup of pure gladness with no bitterness in its dregs. It spends the
present moment with a free hand, and yet leaves no undesirable mortgage
upon the future. King Arthur, the founder of the Round Table, expressed
a conviction, according to Tennyson, that the most important element in
a young knight's education is "the maiden passion for a maid." Surely
the safest form in which this course in the curriculum may be taken is
by falling in love with a girl in a book. It is the only affair of the
kind into which a young fellow can enter without responsibility, and out
of which he can always emerge, when necessary, without discredit. And as
for the old fellow who still keeps up this education of the heart, and
worships his heroine with the ardour of a John Ridd and the fidelity of
a Henry Esmond, I maintain that he is exempt from all the penalties of
declining years. The man who can love a girl in a book may be old, but
never aged.

So we sailed, lovers all three, among the Western Isles, and whatever
ship it wa