A DAY WITH THE CHIEF. 43 



amount to over 300,000 acres. He is a baronet, but that does not 

 seem to bother him. His titles, or his lands, or his natural great 

 intelligence have not served to make him other than the most gracious 

 host and thoroughgoing sportsman companion of any man I ever knew, 

 except one. 



He forgot nothing while I was with him which might add to my 

 comfort and happiness, and yet there never was the slightest display 

 of burdensome, intensive hospitality which one sometimes encounters. 

 His style of entertaining was the happiest blending of the best form 

 of American guest carefulness and that somewhat disconcerting British 

 ultra-freedom of action. To me the Chief proved a most intensely 

 interesting and congenial companion. He has globe trotted with the 

 best, China, India and the far isles of the East have known him. 

 He served with distinction as a volunteer in the last passage of arms 

 between the British and the Boers. He has shot game, big and little, 

 in most places where shooting is to be had. He is alert of mind and 

 facile of hand; inventing, perfecting, manufacturing and offering to 

 the world the children of his brain and ten fingers. 



He is as much at home in a machine shop as in a drawing room, 

 and withal a true sportsmen in every fiber of his being. Finding 

 himself at his majority land poor, with a far-sightedness and good 

 sense which do him infinite credit, he abandoned the career of a 

 soldier for which he had been educated and in which he would most 

 certainly have shone, and undertook to rehabilitate the fortunes of 

 his house. This undertaking has met with conspicuous success. 



I like him, and it pleases me to be able to say pleasant things about 

 him. The pleasure he gave me during my Scotch experiences could 

 not be measured in human emotions, nor paid for in any coin of God 

 or man. 



I saw the Chief away in his trim little "Fiat" and then with Danny, 

 head stalker, he of the legs, you remember, in another car we ran 

 over the same ground as the morning before and took the same climb. 



But now my legs commenced to know me as their master, and my 

 lungs and heart complained not of the strain put upon them. There 

 was much rain this day, as Danny and I went on to the top. It was 

 cold and I felt the cold, but I gloried in it, and in my strength to 

 stand the walk against the wind, and beat it back and push it aside. 

 I shook my head in the teeth of the gale and dared it to come on. 



