CURLING 989 



time being is wild over curling ; and although the 

 place of honour in the chair may be yielded to the 

 great man in the parish, yet talent asserts itself, and 

 the most skilful curler is the most respected man. 

 Very possibly he is a labourer, who wears over patched 

 corduroys the high-collared ancient black coat handed 

 down from his grandfather, and with a marked flavour 

 of the chest in which it reposes from Sabbath to 

 Sabbath. Memory is a faculty which might be 

 supposed almost dormant in the most of them from 

 lack of use, yet e.very man remembers, or swears he 

 remembers, each shot that has been played on that 

 eventful day. Then there are the matches of past 

 years to be referred to, and the weather, for once, 

 furnishes a topic equally natural and engrossing as they 

 meet season after season the " lang frosts " marked 

 with white stones, and those melancholy " Green Yules " 

 that stopped the curling and filled the neighbouring 

 kirkyard. After all, if you do somewhat exceed in the 

 boiled beef, the Islay, or the Glenlivet, to-morrow, 

 should the frost but hold, it will give you plenary 

 absolution. But that element of uncertainty which is 

 so apt to mix gall in the cup of the curler will the 

 weather last ? Matches must be concerted beforehand, 

 and your sport is likewise the sport of the capricious 

 elements. Travellers from Perth to Stirling may have 

 observed among its somewhat sad surroundings a 

 meadow stretching along the line and evidently meant 

 to be flooded on occasion. On those few acres of 

 ground are concentrated annually in Scotland for 



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