402 PHOTOGRAPHIC LIKENESS. CHAP. xxm. 



they are about the most religious and professing people 

 on the face of the earth. 



" You have been speaking of our railway projects. 

 Just as usual a barking and bickering affair. Thurso 

 and Wick cannot agree. Very lately they were burning 

 here an effigy of a man of straw, which they named the 

 editor of the Northern Ensign. And the Wick folk 

 burnt our John George Sinclair, son of Sir George 

 Sinclair, all because they differed in their notions of 

 what was what." 



His brother-in-law having sent him his photograph, 

 Dick said: "Of course, I ought in return to send you 

 'mysel,' but there is no one here but a watchmaker who 

 does anything that way; and some people have got 

 themselves made so very unlike life, that I prefer not 

 trusting to be made a mock of. 



" Yet you may some time or another see me ; and in 

 the meantime, to assist your imagination, you can just 

 fancy a round-faced, grey-whiskered, laughing fellow. 

 Indeed, so much is that my character, that a young 

 man, now in New Zealand, used to say of me that I 

 was always laughing. In fact, that young man often 

 came to me sad and sad enough, and I always sent him 

 away laughing too. He still remembers me, and sends 

 me the New Zealand papers." 



Dick was still working at his grasses in order to 

 complete his herbarium : " I am anxious," he said, " to 

 complete my British grasses no very easy matter, as 

 botanists generally despise grasses. Why they should 

 do so is a mystery to me, for grasses are very interest- 

 ing plants. 



