CHAPTEE LI I. 



Tourist Grumblers; how to deal with them Sea Fishing Superstition about a Gull 

 Josephus Story of Mosollam and the Augur. 



WITH a bright sun overhead, at noon as nearly vertical as it can 

 ever be in our latitudes, and a steady, kindly warmth, and no lack 

 now of genial showers, our West Highlands are now [June 1876] 

 beautiful exceedingly, almost at the height and heyday of their 

 summer loveliness, while crops of all kinds are at their present stage 

 all that we could wish them. Tourists in considerable numbers are 

 already on the move ; and coaches and steamers alike are beginning 

 to carry daily increasing crowds of passengers, so delighted with 

 the attention paid them, and the elegance and comfort of their 

 surroundings whether afloat or ashore, that a crack with them, as 

 you chance to forgather of an evening, is always pleasant, for the 

 essentials of a pleasant conversation are there to begin with ; they 

 are pleased, and you are glad that it is so ; the rest is all smooth 

 sailing. You meet an occasional grumbler of course ; a wretch, 

 miserable himself, and anxious to make every one else miserable 

 also. An extraordinary curiosity, in truth, is your thorough 

 grumbler. The faculty would probably explain it all away by a 

 reference to dyspepsia or some serious derangement of liver. From 

 frequent and close study, however, of a not uninteresting pheno- 

 menon, we are rather inclined to think otherwise. In the genuine 

 grumbler the disposition to look at things obliquely, and from a 

 false or foreshortened point of view, seems ingrained in and inter- 

 woven with his very nature. In everything he says and does you 



