178 ANGLERS' EVENINGS. 



reminded that there is a land of civilization beyond these 

 desolate regions, where people live, and move, and have 

 kettledrums. When I tell you that I have not brought a 

 bonnet here, you will know the depths of degradation to 

 which I have descended. I feel as far from the pomps 

 and vanities of this present evil world as a stained-glass 

 martyr in a church window. 



When I had came to the end of my letters I heaved 

 a sigh of profound regret for vanished happiness, and then 

 read two chapters of a French book by way of improving 

 my mind. Then I watched a man in a cart going from 

 the hotel to a peat-stack in the distance and bringing 

 back turf. It took him thirty-five minutes to go, fill his 

 cart, and return. He stood up in the middle of the cart, 

 and jogged along with his hands in his pockets. He 

 varied the time by singing Gaelic songs, and .sucking 

 straws in a meditative manner as he contemplated his 

 horse, which plodded along without requiring any reins to 

 guide it. When I was growing tired of watching the 

 sleepy movements of the peat-cart, I was aroused by the 

 unusual spectacle of the schoolmaster's chimney on fire ! 

 It burnt ten minutes, and life afterwards seemed very 

 flat and uninteresting. Then I devoted myself to the 

 Nineteenth Century until five o'clock, when I went upstairs 

 to change my dress, and came down again to my solitary 

 tea, the drinking of which I spun out as long as possible. 

 Then Christina lighted the fire, and I put the room in order 

 against the return of the gentlemen. The other anglers 

 in the hotel came home, and, in loud voices, compared 

 notes outside the window upon the day's sport and the 



