MAKERSTOUN 



yet is very seldom seen in private gardens to wit, 

 Senecio Grayi, a silvery-leaved shrub (the back of the 

 sprays is like carved ivory), with abundant golden flowers. 

 To those who have not yet acquired this treasure my 

 advice is do so without delay. 



LXIV 

 It is an experiment of dubious wisdom to revisit in 



the afternoon of life scenes which one has not 

 Makerstoun. . n .. . -r, , , 



beheld since its sunny morning. Every land- 

 scape, be it not the Sahara or the ocean, must undergo 

 change for better or worse in the course of forty years. 

 Even if the change be not distressing, the visitor himself 

 must be mournfully conscious that he views the scene 

 from a very different standpoint. His outlook has parted 

 with the glow of promise; well for him if it be not 

 dimmed by the gloom of regret. 



Some such thoughts as these were mine as I stood 

 lately beside the Tweed at Makerstoun and gazed upon a 

 scene which, unvisited since boyhood, had remained more 

 vividly impressed on memory than most others. For it 

 was here, in the race of the. Clippers, that I raised my 

 first Tweed salmon; and here I had come again, after 

 forty years, as tremulously eager as any tyro for a contest 

 with the king of fishes. In that interval it boots not to 

 reckon how many days I have spent wasted, some will 

 say on the bonny banks of Tweed, fishing almost every 

 cast from Gladswood to Carham Dub ; but never, since 

 1866, had it been my luck to wet a line at Makerstoun. 

 None who know this water will dispute its claim to be 

 the cream of Tweed angling. In her long journey from 

 Corse Hill to the German Ocean, to quote quaint old 



