SPINNING. 79 



have found very many most comfortable and 

 most reasonable hostelries in that much-abused 

 land. I have no faith in the accounts of those 

 bilious, grumbling tourists, who, year by year, in- 

 dite their prosy complaints of ill-usage and extor- 

 tion for the benefit of the readers of the Times in 

 " the silly season," when alone they have a chance 

 of a column. No one is more impatient of impo- 

 sition than myself; but my motto is, " live and let 

 live ;" and if tourists would take to their hearts the 

 fact that a Scotch innkeeper has a short twelve 

 weeks out of the year during which he must earn 

 his livelihood, and get the means of paying rent, 

 rates, and taxes, they would hardly complain of 

 being charged is. gd. or 2s. for their breakfast, and 

 3s. 6d. for their dinner, charges I have seen held 

 up to execration in the public prints, and which I 

 declare I have been almost ashamed to pay, when 

 I considered their inadequacy as compared with the 

 awful amount of the liberal and often expensive 

 viands provided for the vigorous appetite gained in 

 the keen Scotch air. However, to return to the 

 inn at Dalmally. After fishing in Tweed for 

 salmon, I arrived there one afternoon late in 

 October last. I found the lake, like the river which 

 ran into it, in high flood ; indeed, it had been 

 raining almost incessantly for six weeks, and, 



