rs me:

"Sam Bough was a very sociable man; and, when on a sketching tour,
liked to have a young artist or two with him. Jack Nisbett played the
violin, and Sam the 'cello, etc. Jack was fond of telling that Sam
used to let them all choose the best views, and then he would take
what was left; and Jack, with mild astonishment, would say, that 'it
generally turned out to be the best--on the canvas!'"

In Mr Hammerton's copy of the verses in reply to Mr Crockett's dedication
of _The Stickit Minister_ to Stevenson, in which occurred the fine phrase
"The grey Galloway lands, where about the graves of the martyrs the
whaups are crying, his heart remembers how":

"Blows the wind to-day and the sun and the rain are flying:
Blows the wind on the moors to-day and now,
Where about the graves of the martyrs the whaups are crying,
My heart remembers how.

"Grey recumbent tombs of the dead in desert places,
Standing stones on the vacant wine-red moor,
Hills of sheep, and the _homes_ of the silent vanished races,
And winds austere and pure.

"Be it granted me to behold you again in dying,
Hills of home! and to hear again the call--
Hear about the graves of the martyrs the pee-weet crying,
And hear no more at all."

Mr Hammerton prints _howes_ instead of _homes_, which I have italicised
above. And I may note, though it does not affect the poetry, if it does
a little affect the natural history, that the _pee-weets_ and the whaups
are not the same--the one is the curlew, and the other is the lapwing--the
one most frequenting wild, heathery or peaty moorland, and the other
pasture or even ploughed land--so that it is a great pity for unity and
simplicity alike that Stevenson did not repeat the "whaup," but wrote
rather as though pee-weet or pee-weets were the same as whaups--the
common call of the one is _Ker-lee_, _ker-lee_, and of the other _pee-
weet_, _pee-weet_, hence its common name.

It is a pity, too, that Mr Hammerton has no records of some portions of
the life at Davos Platz. Not only was Stevenson ill there in April 1892,
but his wife collapsed, and the tender concern for her made havoc with
some details of his literary work. It is good to know this. Such errata
or omissions throw a finer light on his character than controlling
perfection would do. Ah, I remember how my old friend W. B. Rands
("Matthew Browne" and "Henry Holbeach") was wont