oisture is needed in summer, for the population is trebled then, and
most tourists require a little water, sometimes, to qualify their
potations.

It is evident from what I have said, that the pedantic and vexatious
system adopted by Euclid in his Elements of Geometry could not be
employed in arranging the chapters of this book. The stern
consecutiveness of that immortal but unpopular author would be out of
place in describing journeys which might have been taken in the reverse
order without much difference in the results.

LITERARY SOCIETIES IN THE HIGHLANDS.

Winter with its long nights gives leisure to the remote glensmen and
crofters. The distractions of the town are not there to take their minds
away from study and meditation. Books may not be abundant, but what
literature is available is eagerly fastened on and thoroughly digested.
In the Lowlands we skip over our books and know nothing thoroughly. The
Highlander, with his limited means and choice, is forced to peruse and
re-peruse, even though he has nothing more lively than Boston's
_Fourfold State_, or Hervey's _Meditations among the Tombs_. But he
knows well what he has so often read, and is quite competent to discuss
and criticise his little row of volumes. A few of the Highland townships
have literary societies in which every variety of subject is debated:
the meetings are usually opened with prayer, but not always closed in
that way. There is a tiny clachan, some twenty miles distant from
Ullapool, on the side of a hill, in view of the grotesque peaks of
Suilven, which has a most flourishing literary society--with president,
vice-president, rules, minutes, and committees. Not once, but twice a
week does this society meet, and when the full moon is propitious for a
clear journey home through the morasses, the debates are often unduly
prolonged and the chairman's summing-up luxuriantly prolix. How many
politicians of note in London have been raked fore and aft in that
little schoolroom! What measures and enactments, plausible to the
unthinking metropolitans, have been cut and slashed there, while the
conscious moon, gleaming in at the window, strove vainly to disperse
the loquacious throng! Listen to the chairman's modest remarks: "_I do
not wish_," he says, "_to embarrass the Government, but_...." Unthinking
Asquith, here is a man who does not wish to embarrass you; he could do
it, but he is merciful! You may breathe freely, you and your Cabinet,
for sp