d mother would go with me, leaving my sisters at
home with the governess. Once in a while we all went together, as,
for example, to the Isle of Man or to Rhyl. So far as practicable, we
children were made acquainted with the literature of places we were
to visit before going there. Thus, before journeying to the Lakes and
Scotland, I had by heart a good deal of Wordsworth, Southey, Burns, and
Walter Scott, and was able, standing amid the lovely uproar of Lodore,
to shout out the story of how the water comes down there; and, again, on
the shores of Loch Katrine, at sunset, after spending a long hour on
the little white beach opposite Ellen's Isle, I ran along the road in
advance of my parents, and, climbing a cliff, saw the breadth of the
lake below me, golden under the sunset clouds, and very aptly recited,
as they came up, Sir Walter's descriptive verse:

"One burnished sheet of living gold,
Loch Katrine lay, beneath him rolled!"

But I was not always so well attuned to the environment. I had got hold
of a hook and line at some hotel on the Lakes, and the old passion
for fishing, which had remained latent since Lenox days for lack of
opportunity, returned upon me with great virulence. So, one day, when
we had set out in a row-boat to visit Rob Roy's cave, I requested, on
arriving there, to be permitted to stay in the boat, moored at the foot
of the cliff, while the others climbed up into the cave, and, as soon as
they had disappeared, I pulled out my line, with a dried-up worm on the
hook, and cast it over the side. I wanted to see the cave, but I wanted
to catch a fish more. Up to that time, I think, I had caught nothing in
all our pilgrimages. If ever Providence is going to give me success (I
said to myself, devoutly), let it be now! Accordingly, just before the
others came back, I felt a strong pull on my line and hauled in amain.
In a moment the fish, which may have been nine inches long, but which
seemed to me leviathan himself, broke the surface, wriggling this way
and that vigorously; but that was the extent to which my prayer was
granted, for, in the words of a rustic fisherman who related his own
experience to me long afterwards, "Just as I was a-goin' to land 'im,
sir, he took an' he let go!" My fish not only took and let go, but he
carried off the hook with him.

I remember wandering with my father through a grassy old church-yard in
search of Wordsworth's grave, which we found at last, looking quite