cxx MEMOIR 



think it will prejudice hhn very much against Mill but that 

 is not my affair. Education of that kind ! . . . I would as soon 

 cram my boys with food and boast of the pounds they had eaten, 

 as cram them with literature.' 



But if Fleeming was an anxious father, he did not suffer his 

 anxiety to prevent the boys from any manly or even dangerous 

 pursuit. Whatever it might occur to them to try, he would 

 carefully show them how to do it, explain the risks, and then 

 either share the danger himself or, if that were not possible, 

 stand aside and wait the event with that unhappy courage of 

 the looker-on. He was a good swimmer, and taught them to 

 swim. He thoroughly loved all manly exercises ; and during 

 Highland their holidays, and principally in the Highlands, helped and 

 encouraged them to excel in as many as possible : to shoot, to 

 fish, to walk, to pull an oar, to hand, reef and steer, and to run 

 a steam launch. In all of these, and in all parts of Highland 

 life, he shared delightedly. He was well on to forty when he 

 took once more to shooting, he was forty-three when he killed 

 his first salmon, but no boy could have more single-mindedly 

 rejoiced in these pursuits. His growing love for the Highland 

 character, perhaps also a sense of the difficulty of the task, led 

 him to take up at forty-one the study of Gaelic ; in which he 

 made some shadow of progress, but not much : the fastnesses of 

 that elusive speech retaining to the last their independence. 

 At the house of his friend Mrs. Blackburn, who plays the part 

 of a Highland lady as to the manner born, he learned the 

 delightful custom of kitchen dances, which became the rule at 

 his own house and brought him into yet nearer contact with his 

 neighbours. And thus at forty-two, he began to learn the reel ; 

 a study, to which he brought his usual smiling earnestness ; and 

 the steps, diagramatically represented by his own hand, are 

 before me as I write. 



The cruise It was in 1879 that a new feature was added to the High- 



st^am ^ an ^ ^ e : a steam l aunc h) called the Purgle, the Styrian corrup- 



launch. tion of Walpurga, after a friend to be hereafter mentioned. ' The 



steam launch goes,' Fleeming wrote. ' I wish you had been 



present to describe two scenes of which she has been the occasion 



