Chapter Twenty Three.

Chapter Twenty Three.Snow-Posts—A Moonlight Ramble—Dalwhinnie—A Danger Escaped—An Ugly Ascent—Inverness at Last.“The rugged mountain’s scanty cloakWas dwarfish shrubs of birch and oak,And patches bright of bracken green,And heather red that waved so high,It held the copse in rivalry;But where the lake slept deep and still,Dank osiers fringed the swamp and hill.”Scott.“Now wound the path its dizzy ledgeAround a precipice’s edge.”Idem.Farther and farther on we walk or trot, and wilder and still more wild grows the scenery around us.Not a tree of any kind is now visible, nor hedge nor fence bounds the narrow road; we are still close to the Garry. Beyond it are heath-clad banks, rising up into a braeland, a hill, or mountain, while the river is far down at the bottom of a cutting, which its own waters have worn in their rush of ages.The road gets narrower now.It cannot be more than nine feet at its widest. But the hills and the mountains are very beautiful; those nearest us are crimsoned over with blooming heather; afar off they are half hidden in the purple mist of distance.All my old favourite flowers have disappeared. I cannot see even a Scottish bluebell, nor a red, nodding foxglove, only on mossy banks the pink and odorous wild thyme-blooms grow among the rocks, tiny lichens paint the boulders, and wherever the water, from some rill which has trickled down the mountain side, stops, and spreads out and forms a patch of green bog land, there grow the wild sweet-scented myrtle, and many sweetly pretty ferns. (The sweet gall, or candleberry myrtle.)In some places the hills are so covered with huge boulders as to suggest the idea that Titans of old must have fought their battles here,—those rocks their weapons of warfare.We must now be far over a thousand feet above the sea-level, and for the first time we catch sight of snow-posts, sometimes singly, sometimes in pairs.The English tourist would in all probability imagine that these were dilapidated telegraph poles. They serve a far different purpose, for were it not for them in winter, when the ground is covered with snow, and the hollows, and even the ravines, are filled up,—were it not for these guiding posts, the traveller, whether on foot or horseback, might get off the path, and never be heard of or seen any more, until the summer’s sun melted the snow and revealed his corpse.Toiling on and on through these mountain fastnesses, we cannot help wondering somewhat anxiously where we can rest to-night. Dalwhinnie, that sweetest spot in this highland wilderness, is still seventeen miles away. We cannot reach there to-night. A fall moon will rise and shine shortly after sunset—this is true, but to attempt so long a journey with tired horses, with so great a weight behind them, and in so rugged a country, would be to court an accident, if not destruction.There is, about four miles ahead of us, a shooting lodge at Dalnacardoch. Yes, but they who live there may not consider hospitality and religion to be nearly akin. We’ll try.“Pull up, Corn-flower.”“Pull up, Pea-blossom.”Pea-blossom is tired herself. If you but shake the whip over her she angrily nibbles at Corn-flower’s nose.“He,” she says as plain as horse can speak, “is in the fault. I am pulling all I can, butheis not doing half the work.”Dalnacardoch at long last.Dalnacardoch! Why, the name is big enough for a good-sized town, or a village at the very least, but here is but a single house. In the good old coaching days it had been a coaching inn.I go to the door and knock.The butler appears.“Who lives here?”“A Mr Whitely, sir, from Yorkshire has the shooting.”“Ha,” I think, “from Yorkshire? Then am I sure of a welcome.”Nor was I mistaken. On a green flat grass plot, near to this Highland shooting-box lies the Wanderer; the horses are in a comfortable stable, knee-deep in straw, with corn and hay to eat in abundance, and I am happy and duly thankful.It is now past nine o’clock; I have dined, and Hurricane Bob and I go out for a stroll in the sweet moonlight, which is flooding mountain, moor, and dell.The day has been fiercely hot, but the night is still and starry, and before morning there will be ice on every pool.How black and bare the hills are, and how lonesome and wild! but what must they be in winter, when the storm winds sweep over them, and when neither fur nor feather can find food and shelter anywhere near them?“Bob, my boy, we will go to bed.”The stillness of the night is sublime, unbroken save by the distant murmur of the Garry, a sound so soothing that I verily believe it would have lulled even Maecenas himself to sleep.On August 20th, as fresh as larks, cold though it had been all night, we started on our route for Dalwhinnie. What an appetite the Highland air gives one! I felt somewhat ashamed of myself this morning, as rasher after rasher of bacon, and egg after egg, disappeared as if by legerdemain; and after all, the probability is that a biscuit and cheese at eleven o’clock may be deemed a necessity of existence.It is a bright sunny morning, but the road is rough and stony; on some parts thedébrishas been washed from the mountain sides, and left to lie across the road, in others some faint attempts at repairs have been undertaken. The plan is primitive in the extreme. A hole is dug in the hillside, and the earth and shingle spaded on to the road.Plenty of sheep are grazing on the boulder-covered mountains, plenty of snakes and lizards basking in the morning sunshine. Some of the snakes are very large and singularly beautiful, and glitter in the sunlight as if they had been dipped in glycerine.This is a land of purple heath, but not of shaggy wood. It would be impossible for any one to hang himself here, unless he requisitioned one of the snow-posts. It is the land of the curlew, the grouse, and the blackcock,—the land mayhap of the eagle, though as yet we have not seen the bird of Jove. The road now gets narrower and still more narrow, while we ride close to the cliffs, with—far below us—the turbulent Garry. Were we to meet a carriage now, passing it would be impossible, and there is no room to draw off.Never before perhaps did a two-ton caravan attempt to cross the Grampians. There are heath-clad braelands rising around us at all sides. Some of the banks near Dalnaspiddal are a sight to behold. The heather that clothes them is of all shades, from pink to the deepest, richest red. So too are the heaths. These last rest in great sheets, folded over the edge of cliffs, clinging to rocks, or lying in splendid patches on the bare yellow earth. Here, too, are ferns of many kinds, the dark-green of dwarf-broom, and the crimson of foxglove bells.When we stop for a few minutes, in order that I may gather wild flowers, the silence is very striking, only the distant treble of the bleating lamb far up the mountain side, and the answering cry of the dam.Here we drive now, close under the shadow of a mountain cliff about two thousand feet high; and from the top cascades of white water are flowing.My coachman marvels. Where on earth, he asks, do these streams come from? He knows not that still higher hills lie behind these.Owing to our great height above the sea-level, the horses pant much in climbing. But the wind has got up, and blows keen and cold among these bleak mountains.Shortly after leaving Dalnaspiddal, the road begins to ascend a mountain side, amidst a scene of such wild and desolate grandeur, as no pen or pencil could do justice to.It was a fearful climb, with Bob running behind, for even his weight, 120 pounds, lightens the carriage appreciably; with the roller down behind an after wheel, and my valet and I pushing behind with all our might, the horses at long last managed to clamber to the highest point. I threw myself on a bank, pumped and almost dead. So were the horses, especially poor Corn-flower, who shook and trembled like an aspen leaf. On looking back it seemed marvellous how we had surmounted the steep ascent. To have failed would have meant ruin. The huge caravan would have effectually blocked the road, and only gangs of men—where in this dreary, houseless wilderness would they have come from?—could have taken us out of the difficulty.Dalwhinnie Hotel is indeed an oasis in the wilderness. It is a hospice, and in railway snow-blocks has more than once saved valuable lives. Both master and mistress are kindness personified.Here, near the hotel, is a broad but shallow river; there is a clump of trees near it too. Fact! I do not mean to say that an athlete could not vault over most of them, but they are trees nevertheless. The house lies in what might be called a wide moorland, 1,200 feet above the sea-level, with mountains on all sides, many of them covered with snow all the year round.I started next day for Kingussie, six hundred feet below the level of Dalwhinnie, where we encamped for the night behind the chief hotel.My dear cousin, Mrs McDonald, of Dalwhinnie, had come with me as far as this town, accompanied by some of her sweet wee children, and what a happy party we were, to be sure! We sang songs and told fairy tales, and made love—I and the children—all the way.Honest John, my cousin’s husband, came in the dogcart, and showed me all the beauties of this charming village, which is situated among some of the finest and wildest scenery in the Scottish Highlands. Beauties of nature, I mean, but we met some pretty people too. Among the latter is old Mrs Cameron, who keeps a highland dram-shop at the other end of the village, and talked to John as she would to a child. She is far over seventy, butsopleasant, andsostout, andsonice.I promised to stop at her door next day as I drove past, and though we started before the hills had thrown off their nightcaps, our old lady was up and about. She entered and admired the caravan, then went straight away and brought out her bottle. Oh! dear reader, she would take no denial.The lady loved to talk, and did not mind chaff. I tried to make it a match between herself and my young valet. But—“’Deed, indeed, no, sir,” she replied, “it is your coachman I’m for, and when he comes back I’ll be all ready to marry him.”So we drove away laughing.Though frosty dews fell last night, the morning is delightful. So also is the scenery on all sides. Hills there are in abundance to climb and descend, but we surmount every difficulty, and reach the romantic village of Carrbridge long before dusk.Here we are to spend the Sunday, and the caravan is trotted on to a high bit of tableland, which is in reality a stackyard, but overlooks the whole village.Narrow Escape of “Wanderer.”This happened to-day, and our adventure very nearly led to a dark ending of our expedition. On our road to Carrbridge, and just at the top of a hill, with a ravine close to our near wheel, the horse in a dogcart, which we met, refused to pass, shied, and backed right against our pole end.For a moment or two we seemed all locked together. The danger was extreme; our horses plunged, and tried to haul us over, and for a few brief seconds it seemed that the Wanderer, the dogcart, plunging horses, and all, would be hurled off the road and over the brae. Had this happened, our destruction would have been swift and certain; so steep and deep was it that the Wanderer must have turned over several times before reaching the bottom.Monday, August 24th.—I am this morningen routefor Inverness, five-and-twenty miles, which we may, or may not, accomplish. We have now to cross the very loftiest spurs of the Grampian range.We are now 800 feet above the level of the sea. We have to rise to 1,300, and then descend to Inverness. Were it all one rise, and all one descent, it would simplify matters considerably, but it is hill and dale, and just at the moment when you are congratulating yourself on being as high as you have to go, behold, the road takes a dip into a glen, and all the climbing has to be repeated on the other side.My last Sunday among the mountains! Yes! And a quiet and peaceful one it was; and right pleasant are the memories I bear away with me from Carrbridge; of the sweet little village itself, and the pleasantnaturalpeople whom I met; of the old romantic bridge; of the hills, clad in dark waving pine-trees; of the great deer forests; of moorlands clad in purple heather; of the far-off range of lofty mountains—among them, Cairngorm—their sides covered with snow, a veritable Sierra Nevada; of the still night and the glorious moonlight, and of the murmuring river that sang me to sleep, with a lullaby sweeter even than the sound of waves breaking on a pebbly beach.We are off at 8:15 am, and the climb begins. After a mile of hard toil, we find ourselves in the centre of a heather-clad moor. Before and around us hills o’er hills successive rise, and mountain over mountain. Their heads are buried in the clouds. This gives to the scene a kind of gloomy grandeur.A deep ravine, a stream in the midst, roaring over its pebbly bed.A dark forest beyond.Six miles more to climb ere we reach our highest altitude.Three miles of scenery bleaker and wilder than any we have yet come to.A dark and gloomy peat moss, with the roots of ancient forest trees appearing here and there.It gets colder and colder, and I am fain to wrap myself in my Highland plaid.We meet some horses and carts; the horses start or shy, and remembering our adventure of yesterday we feel nervous till they pass.On and on, and up and up. We are among the clouds, and the air is cold and damp.We now near the gloomy mountains and deep ravines of Slochmuichk.We stop and have a peep ahead. Must the Wanderer, indeed, climb that terrible hill? Down beneath that narrow mountain path the ravine is 500 feet deep at the least. There is a sharp corner to turn, too, up yonder, and what is beyond?This Page Missing.This Page Missing.

“The rugged mountain’s scanty cloakWas dwarfish shrubs of birch and oak,And patches bright of bracken green,And heather red that waved so high,It held the copse in rivalry;But where the lake slept deep and still,Dank osiers fringed the swamp and hill.”Scott.“Now wound the path its dizzy ledgeAround a precipice’s edge.”Idem.

Farther and farther on we walk or trot, and wilder and still more wild grows the scenery around us.

Not a tree of any kind is now visible, nor hedge nor fence bounds the narrow road; we are still close to the Garry. Beyond it are heath-clad banks, rising up into a braeland, a hill, or mountain, while the river is far down at the bottom of a cutting, which its own waters have worn in their rush of ages.

The road gets narrower now.

It cannot be more than nine feet at its widest. But the hills and the mountains are very beautiful; those nearest us are crimsoned over with blooming heather; afar off they are half hidden in the purple mist of distance.

All my old favourite flowers have disappeared. I cannot see even a Scottish bluebell, nor a red, nodding foxglove, only on mossy banks the pink and odorous wild thyme-blooms grow among the rocks, tiny lichens paint the boulders, and wherever the water, from some rill which has trickled down the mountain side, stops, and spreads out and forms a patch of green bog land, there grow the wild sweet-scented myrtle, and many sweetly pretty ferns. (The sweet gall, or candleberry myrtle.)

In some places the hills are so covered with huge boulders as to suggest the idea that Titans of old must have fought their battles here,—those rocks their weapons of warfare.

We must now be far over a thousand feet above the sea-level, and for the first time we catch sight of snow-posts, sometimes singly, sometimes in pairs.

The English tourist would in all probability imagine that these were dilapidated telegraph poles. They serve a far different purpose, for were it not for them in winter, when the ground is covered with snow, and the hollows, and even the ravines, are filled up,—were it not for these guiding posts, the traveller, whether on foot or horseback, might get off the path, and never be heard of or seen any more, until the summer’s sun melted the snow and revealed his corpse.

Toiling on and on through these mountain fastnesses, we cannot help wondering somewhat anxiously where we can rest to-night. Dalwhinnie, that sweetest spot in this highland wilderness, is still seventeen miles away. We cannot reach there to-night. A fall moon will rise and shine shortly after sunset—this is true, but to attempt so long a journey with tired horses, with so great a weight behind them, and in so rugged a country, would be to court an accident, if not destruction.

There is, about four miles ahead of us, a shooting lodge at Dalnacardoch. Yes, but they who live there may not consider hospitality and religion to be nearly akin. We’ll try.

“Pull up, Corn-flower.”

“Pull up, Pea-blossom.”

Pea-blossom is tired herself. If you but shake the whip over her she angrily nibbles at Corn-flower’s nose.

“He,” she says as plain as horse can speak, “is in the fault. I am pulling all I can, butheis not doing half the work.”

Dalnacardoch at long last.

Dalnacardoch! Why, the name is big enough for a good-sized town, or a village at the very least, but here is but a single house. In the good old coaching days it had been a coaching inn.

I go to the door and knock.

The butler appears.

“Who lives here?”

“A Mr Whitely, sir, from Yorkshire has the shooting.”

“Ha,” I think, “from Yorkshire? Then am I sure of a welcome.”

Nor was I mistaken. On a green flat grass plot, near to this Highland shooting-box lies the Wanderer; the horses are in a comfortable stable, knee-deep in straw, with corn and hay to eat in abundance, and I am happy and duly thankful.

It is now past nine o’clock; I have dined, and Hurricane Bob and I go out for a stroll in the sweet moonlight, which is flooding mountain, moor, and dell.

The day has been fiercely hot, but the night is still and starry, and before morning there will be ice on every pool.

How black and bare the hills are, and how lonesome and wild! but what must they be in winter, when the storm winds sweep over them, and when neither fur nor feather can find food and shelter anywhere near them?

“Bob, my boy, we will go to bed.”

The stillness of the night is sublime, unbroken save by the distant murmur of the Garry, a sound so soothing that I verily believe it would have lulled even Maecenas himself to sleep.

On August 20th, as fresh as larks, cold though it had been all night, we started on our route for Dalwhinnie. What an appetite the Highland air gives one! I felt somewhat ashamed of myself this morning, as rasher after rasher of bacon, and egg after egg, disappeared as if by legerdemain; and after all, the probability is that a biscuit and cheese at eleven o’clock may be deemed a necessity of existence.

It is a bright sunny morning, but the road is rough and stony; on some parts thedébrishas been washed from the mountain sides, and left to lie across the road, in others some faint attempts at repairs have been undertaken. The plan is primitive in the extreme. A hole is dug in the hillside, and the earth and shingle spaded on to the road.

Plenty of sheep are grazing on the boulder-covered mountains, plenty of snakes and lizards basking in the morning sunshine. Some of the snakes are very large and singularly beautiful, and glitter in the sunlight as if they had been dipped in glycerine.

This is a land of purple heath, but not of shaggy wood. It would be impossible for any one to hang himself here, unless he requisitioned one of the snow-posts. It is the land of the curlew, the grouse, and the blackcock,—the land mayhap of the eagle, though as yet we have not seen the bird of Jove. The road now gets narrower and still more narrow, while we ride close to the cliffs, with—far below us—the turbulent Garry. Were we to meet a carriage now, passing it would be impossible, and there is no room to draw off.

Never before perhaps did a two-ton caravan attempt to cross the Grampians. There are heath-clad braelands rising around us at all sides. Some of the banks near Dalnaspiddal are a sight to behold. The heather that clothes them is of all shades, from pink to the deepest, richest red. So too are the heaths. These last rest in great sheets, folded over the edge of cliffs, clinging to rocks, or lying in splendid patches on the bare yellow earth. Here, too, are ferns of many kinds, the dark-green of dwarf-broom, and the crimson of foxglove bells.

When we stop for a few minutes, in order that I may gather wild flowers, the silence is very striking, only the distant treble of the bleating lamb far up the mountain side, and the answering cry of the dam.

Here we drive now, close under the shadow of a mountain cliff about two thousand feet high; and from the top cascades of white water are flowing.

My coachman marvels. Where on earth, he asks, do these streams come from? He knows not that still higher hills lie behind these.

Owing to our great height above the sea-level, the horses pant much in climbing. But the wind has got up, and blows keen and cold among these bleak mountains.

Shortly after leaving Dalnaspiddal, the road begins to ascend a mountain side, amidst a scene of such wild and desolate grandeur, as no pen or pencil could do justice to.

It was a fearful climb, with Bob running behind, for even his weight, 120 pounds, lightens the carriage appreciably; with the roller down behind an after wheel, and my valet and I pushing behind with all our might, the horses at long last managed to clamber to the highest point. I threw myself on a bank, pumped and almost dead. So were the horses, especially poor Corn-flower, who shook and trembled like an aspen leaf. On looking back it seemed marvellous how we had surmounted the steep ascent. To have failed would have meant ruin. The huge caravan would have effectually blocked the road, and only gangs of men—where in this dreary, houseless wilderness would they have come from?—could have taken us out of the difficulty.

Dalwhinnie Hotel is indeed an oasis in the wilderness. It is a hospice, and in railway snow-blocks has more than once saved valuable lives. Both master and mistress are kindness personified.

Here, near the hotel, is a broad but shallow river; there is a clump of trees near it too. Fact! I do not mean to say that an athlete could not vault over most of them, but they are trees nevertheless. The house lies in what might be called a wide moorland, 1,200 feet above the sea-level, with mountains on all sides, many of them covered with snow all the year round.

I started next day for Kingussie, six hundred feet below the level of Dalwhinnie, where we encamped for the night behind the chief hotel.

My dear cousin, Mrs McDonald, of Dalwhinnie, had come with me as far as this town, accompanied by some of her sweet wee children, and what a happy party we were, to be sure! We sang songs and told fairy tales, and made love—I and the children—all the way.

Honest John, my cousin’s husband, came in the dogcart, and showed me all the beauties of this charming village, which is situated among some of the finest and wildest scenery in the Scottish Highlands. Beauties of nature, I mean, but we met some pretty people too. Among the latter is old Mrs Cameron, who keeps a highland dram-shop at the other end of the village, and talked to John as she would to a child. She is far over seventy, butsopleasant, andsostout, andsonice.

I promised to stop at her door next day as I drove past, and though we started before the hills had thrown off their nightcaps, our old lady was up and about. She entered and admired the caravan, then went straight away and brought out her bottle. Oh! dear reader, she would take no denial.

The lady loved to talk, and did not mind chaff. I tried to make it a match between herself and my young valet. But—

“’Deed, indeed, no, sir,” she replied, “it is your coachman I’m for, and when he comes back I’ll be all ready to marry him.”

So we drove away laughing.

Though frosty dews fell last night, the morning is delightful. So also is the scenery on all sides. Hills there are in abundance to climb and descend, but we surmount every difficulty, and reach the romantic village of Carrbridge long before dusk.

Here we are to spend the Sunday, and the caravan is trotted on to a high bit of tableland, which is in reality a stackyard, but overlooks the whole village.

Narrow Escape of “Wanderer.”

This happened to-day, and our adventure very nearly led to a dark ending of our expedition. On our road to Carrbridge, and just at the top of a hill, with a ravine close to our near wheel, the horse in a dogcart, which we met, refused to pass, shied, and backed right against our pole end.

For a moment or two we seemed all locked together. The danger was extreme; our horses plunged, and tried to haul us over, and for a few brief seconds it seemed that the Wanderer, the dogcart, plunging horses, and all, would be hurled off the road and over the brae. Had this happened, our destruction would have been swift and certain; so steep and deep was it that the Wanderer must have turned over several times before reaching the bottom.

Monday, August 24th.—I am this morningen routefor Inverness, five-and-twenty miles, which we may, or may not, accomplish. We have now to cross the very loftiest spurs of the Grampian range.

We are now 800 feet above the level of the sea. We have to rise to 1,300, and then descend to Inverness. Were it all one rise, and all one descent, it would simplify matters considerably, but it is hill and dale, and just at the moment when you are congratulating yourself on being as high as you have to go, behold, the road takes a dip into a glen, and all the climbing has to be repeated on the other side.

My last Sunday among the mountains! Yes! And a quiet and peaceful one it was; and right pleasant are the memories I bear away with me from Carrbridge; of the sweet little village itself, and the pleasantnaturalpeople whom I met; of the old romantic bridge; of the hills, clad in dark waving pine-trees; of the great deer forests; of moorlands clad in purple heather; of the far-off range of lofty mountains—among them, Cairngorm—their sides covered with snow, a veritable Sierra Nevada; of the still night and the glorious moonlight, and of the murmuring river that sang me to sleep, with a lullaby sweeter even than the sound of waves breaking on a pebbly beach.

We are off at 8:15 am, and the climb begins. After a mile of hard toil, we find ourselves in the centre of a heather-clad moor. Before and around us hills o’er hills successive rise, and mountain over mountain. Their heads are buried in the clouds. This gives to the scene a kind of gloomy grandeur.

A deep ravine, a stream in the midst, roaring over its pebbly bed.

A dark forest beyond.

Six miles more to climb ere we reach our highest altitude.

Three miles of scenery bleaker and wilder than any we have yet come to.

A dark and gloomy peat moss, with the roots of ancient forest trees appearing here and there.

It gets colder and colder, and I am fain to wrap myself in my Highland plaid.

We meet some horses and carts; the horses start or shy, and remembering our adventure of yesterday we feel nervous till they pass.

On and on, and up and up. We are among the clouds, and the air is cold and damp.

We now near the gloomy mountains and deep ravines of Slochmuichk.

We stop and have a peep ahead. Must the Wanderer, indeed, climb that terrible hill? Down beneath that narrow mountain path the ravine is 500 feet deep at the least. There is a sharp corner to turn, too, up yonder, and what is beyond?

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Chapter Twenty Four.Wild Flowers—A Hedgerow in July—Hedgerows in General—In Woodland and Copse—In Fields and in Moorlands.“Ye wildlings of Nature, I doat upon you,For ye waft me to summers of old,When the earth teemed around me with fairy delight.And when daisies and buttercups gladdened my sight,Like treasures of silver and gold.”Campbell.“Fair, my own darling, are the flowers in spring...Rathe primrose, violet, and eglantine,Anemone and golden celandine.Not less delicious all the birds that singCarols of joy upon the amorous wing,Earine, in these sweet hours of thine.”Mortimer Collinz (to his wife).From the day we started from the tree-clad plains of bird-haunted Berks till that on which, after crossing the wild Grampian range, we rolled into the capital of the Scottish Highlands, the Wanderer was gay interiorly with wild and garden flowers.Did we purchase these flowers? Never once, for, strange as it may seem, I do not think that I ever left a town or village or humblest hamlet without having a bouquet or two presented to me.Nor were the persons who brought those flowers always such as one would feel inclined to associate with the poetry that floated around their floral gifts.A rosebud or a lily, in the fair fingers of a beautiful girl, is idyllic; it is in keeping with nature. But what say you to a bunch of sweet-scented carnations, pinks, and lilac pea-blooms trailing over the toil-tinted fingers of some rustic dame of forty?Would you not accept the latter almost as readily as the former? Yes, you would, especially if she said,—“Have a few flowers, sir? I know you are fond of them.”Especially if you knew that a great kindly lump of a heart was beating under a probably not over-fashionable corset, and a real living soul peeping out through a pair of merry laughing eyes.But rough-looking men, ay, even miners, also brought me flowers.And children never failed me. Their wee bits of bouquets were oft-times sadly untidy, but their wee bits of hearts were warm, so I never refused them.Some bairnies were too shy to come right round to the back door of the Wanderer with their floral offerings; they would watch a chance when they imagined I was not looking, lay them on thecoupé, and run.Which of the wild flowers, I now wonder, did I love the best? I can hardly say. Perhaps the wild roses that trailed for ever over the hedgerows. But have they not their rivals in the climbing honeysuckle and in the bright-eyed creeping convolvulus? Yes, and in a hundred other sweet gems.Not a flower can I think of, indeed, that does not recall to my mind some pleasant scene.“Even now what affections the violet awakes;What loved little islands, twice seen in their lakes,Can the wild water-lily restore;What landscapes I read in the primrose’s looks,And what pictures of pebbles and minnowy brooks,In the vetches that tangle the shore.”If any proof were needed that I had derived the most intense pleasure from the constant companionship of the wild flowers in my caravan rambles, it is surely to be found in the fact that I am writing this chapter, on a bitter winter’s morning in the month of March, sitting in my garden wigwam. When I essayed to commence work to-day I found my writing fluid was frozen, and I could not coax even a dip from the bottle until I had set it over the stove.And yet it is a morning in March.Last year at this time the sun was warm, the air was balmy, the crocuses, primroses, snowdrops, and even the tulips were in bloom, and the brown earth was soft and dry. Now it is as hard as adamant. But there is beauty even in this wintry scene. If I take a walk into the garden I find that the hoarfrost brightens everything, and that the tiniest object, even a blade of grass or a withered leaf, is worthy of being admired.That tall row of spectre-like poplar trees—whether it be winter or summer—is a study in itself. But last night those trees were pointing at the stars with dark skeleton fingers. Those fingers are pointing now at the blue, blue sky, but they seem changed to whitest coral. Those elm trees along the side of yonder field are clothed with a winter foliage of hoarfrost. Seems as though in a single night they had come again into full leaf, and those leaves had been changed by enchantment into snow. As the sunlight streams athwart them they are beautiful beyond compare.My wild-birds are here in the garden and on the lawns in dozens, huddled in under the dwarf spruces, firs, and laurels, and even cock-robin looks all of a heap.Hey presto! I have but to shut my eyes and think back, and the scene is changed. I see before me—A Hedgerow in July.Where am I? Away up north on a Yorkshire wold. The horses are out and grazing on the clovery sward by the roadside.How silent it is!As I lie here on my rugs on thecoupé, I can hear a mole rustling through the grass at the hedge-foot. But the hedgerow itself, and all about it, how refreshing to look upon!Surely no billhook or axe of woodsman has ever come near it since first it began to grow. Its very irregularity gives it additional charm. The hedge itself is really of blackthorn, but its white or pink-ticked blossoms have faded and given place to haws. Here and there, as far as you can see, up through it grow wild dwarf oak bushes, their foliage crimson or carmine tipped, dwarf plane-trees, with broad sienna leaves, that glitter in the sunshine as if they had been varnished; and elder-trees with big white stars of blossom, and rougher leaves of darkest green. Young elms, too, are yonder, and infant ash trees with stems as black as ink and strangely tinted leaves.(Plane-trees, so-called, but in reality the Sycamore: the Acer pseudo-platanus of naturalists.)“The sycamore, capricious in attire,Now green, now tawny, and ere autumn yetHas changed the woods, in scarlet honours bright.”Here and there wild roses, pale pink or deepest crimson, blush out; here and there are patches of honeysuckle, and here and there waves of the white flowery bryony roll foaming over the green.In some places the light and tender-leaved woody nightshade, whose berries in bunches of crimson and green are so pretty in autumn, impart a spring-like appearance to this hedgerow.Nor does the beauty of my hedgerow end here for all along beneath grow rare and lovely grasses, interspersed with star-eyed silenes and gorgeous spikes of the purple stachys, while the adjoining sward is carpeted over with beds of brilliant clover, red and white, with golden bird’s-foot trefoil, and patches of pale blue speedwells.Bees are very busy all over this glory of colour, humming as they fly from flower to flower, but becoming abruptly silent as soon as their feet touch the silken blossoms. And birds there are too, though now they have for the most part ceased to sing, except the robin and a yellow-hammer, and these birds will continue lilting long after even the autumn tints are on the trees.Hedgerows in General.These were almost ever with us—one long-drawn delight. For five hundred miles, indeed, they accompanied the Wanderer on her journey. When, at any time, they left us for a space, and stone fences or wooden palings took their place, we were never happy until they again appeared.From memory I jot down the names of a few of the plants and flowers that mingled with them, or trailed over or through them, constituting their chief charm and beauty.First on the list, naturally enough, come the rose gems, including the sweetbriar or eglantine, with its deep pink flowers and sweetly-scented leaves; the field-rose, theRosa arvensis, with pale pink blossoms, and the charmingRosa canina, or dog-rose, with petals of a darker red.As I have already said, these roses grew everywhere among the hedges, in garlands, in wreaths, and in canopies, and always looked their best where the blackthorns had not been disfigured by touch of billhook or pruning shears.In the earlier spring the hedges had a beauty of their own, being snowed over with clustering blossoms.The bryony and the honeysuckle I have already mentioned. The green and crimson berries on the former, when the summer begins to wane, are rivalled only by those of the charming woody nightshade.Regarding the honeysuckle, a naturalist in a London magazine wrote the other day as follows:—“In the ordinary way, the branches grow out from the parent stem and twine round the first support they meetfront right to left;”—the italics are mine—“but should they fail to find that support, two branches will mutually support each other, one twining from left to right, the other from right to left.”Now the fact is that the honeysuckle twines from left to right, and if two or three branches are together, as we often find them, it is the weaker who twine round the stronger,—still from left to right.The wild convolvulus, with its great white bell-like blossoms, that so often stars the hedgerows with a singular beauty, twines always to meet the sun.TheVicia cracca, or purple climbing vetch, is an object of rare loveliness in July and August. It is a species of clustering-blossomed tare or sweet-pea, with neat, wee green leaves, and flowers of a bluish purple. It is not content with creeping up through the hedge, but it must go crawling along over the top to woo the sunshine.Later on in summer and early autumn blooms the well-known bramble—the black-fruitedrubus.No poet, as far as I am aware, has yet celebrated the purple trailing vetch in song, but the bramble has not been forgotten.Hear Elliott’s exquisite lines:—“Though woodbines flaunt and roses glowO’er all the fragrant bowers,Thou needst not be ashamed to showThy satin-threaded flowers.For dull the eye, the heart is dull,That cannot feel how fair,Amid all beauty, beautiful,Thy tender blossoms are.* * * * *.“While silent showers are falling slow,And ’mid the general hush,A sweet air lifts the little bough,Low whispering through the bush.The primrose to the grave has gone;The hawthorn flower is dead;The violet by the moss’d grey stoneHath laid her weary head;But thou, wild bramble, back dost bring,In all their beauteous power,The fresh green days of life’s fair spring,And boyhood’s blossoming hour.”Nestling down by the hedgerow foot, among tall reeds and grey or brown seedling grasses, is many and many a charming wild flower, such as the stachys, the crimson ragged-robbin, with flowers like coral, and the snow-white silene.Woodland and Copse.Far away in bonnie Scotland, where the woods are mostly composed of dark, waving, brown-stemmed pine-trees, feathery larches—crimson-tasselled in early spring—or gloomy spruces, there is often an absence of any undergrowth, unless it be heather. But English copses are often one wild tanglement of trailing flowering shrubs, with banks of bracken or ferns.I have often stopped to admire the marvellous beauty of these copse-lands; their wealth of silent loveliness has more than once brought the tears to my eyes.So now I refrain from describing them, because any attempt to do so would end in failure. But, reader, have you seen an English woodland carpeted with deep-blue hyacinths, with snowy anemones, or with the sweet wee white pink-streaked sorrel, with its bashful leaves of bending green? Have you seen the golden-tasselled broom waving in the soft spring wind? Or, later on in the season, the tall and stately foxgloves blooming red amidst the greenery of a fern bank? If not, a treat, both rich and rare, may still be yours.Is it not said that the wild anemone or wind-flower grew from the tears shed by Venus over the grave of Adonis?“But gentle flowers are born, and bloom around,From every drop that falls upon the ground:Where streams his blood, there blushing springs the rose,And where a tear has dropped a wind-flower blows.”I think it must be the wood-anemone that is referred to as the snowdrop in that bonnie old Scottish song,My Nannie’s awa’:—“The snowdrop and primrose our woodlands adorn,And violets blaw in the dews o’ the morn,They pain my sad bosom, sae sweetly they blaw,They mind me on Nannie—and Nannie’s awa’.”Fields and Moorland.Turning to these, what oceans of beauty I saw everywhere around me during all the months of my travel!In May, many of the uplands were covered with the yellow-blooming furze or whins. The black forest, for instance, ’twixt Guildford and Frimley, was a sight worth travelling long miles to look upon; while nothing could excel the fragrance of the perfume shed everywhere around.The furze lies low to the ground where it has plenty of sunlight, but straggles upwards to seek the light when it grows in the woodlands.Sweet-scented thistles of every shade—I had almost added “and every shape”—grew plentifully in corners of fields we passed, mostly prickly, but some harmless; lilac, pale pink, dark crimson, and purple; field thistles, milk thistles, melancholy thistles, and nodding thistles.This latter species I found growing in glorious profusion on the links of Musselburgh, and I quite adorned my caravan with them.Wherever thistles grow in fields, the tansy is not far off; a showy, yellow, too-hardy flower, without, in my opinion, a vestige of romance about it. Perhaps the sheep think differently, for long after Scottish fields and “baulks” are picked bare, they can always find a pluck of sweet green grass by taking their tongues round a tansy stem.The yellow meadow vetchling is a beautiful, bright-yellow, pea-like flower, that dearly loves a snug corner under a hedge or bush of furze.The pink-blossomed geranium-like mallow we all know. It is none the less lovely, however, because common; and here is a hint worth knowing—it looks well in a vase, and will bloom for weeks in water.But a far more lovely flower, that I first foregathered with, I think, in Yorkshire, is the wild blue geranium, or meadow crane’s-bill. Words alone could not describe its beauty, it must be seen. It mostly grows by the wayside.Need I even name the corn-marigold, or the blush of the corn-poppies among green growing wheat, or the exquisitely lovely sainfoin, that sheds its crimson beauty over many a southern field; or the blue and charming corn-flower, that delights to bloom amid the ripening grain?Oh! dear farmer, call it not a weed, hint not at its being a hurt-sickle—rather admire and love it.Nay, but the farmer will not, he has no romance about him, and will quote me lines like these:—“Bluebottle, thee my numbers fain would raise,And thy complexion challenge all my praise,Thy countenance like summer skies is fair;But ah! how different thy vile manners are.A treacherous guest, destruction thou dost bringTo th’ inhospitable field where thou dost spring,Thou blunt’st the very reaper’s sickle, and soIn life and death becom’st the farmer’s foe.”But cowslips, and buttercups—“The winking Mary-buds beginTo ope their golden eyes.”Shakespeare.—And the chaste and pretty ox-eye daisy, even a farmer will not object to my adoring, for the very names of these bring to his mind sleek-sided cattle wading in spring time knee-deep in fields of green sweet grass.And what shall I say of gowan or mountain-daisy? Oh! what should I say, but repeat the lines of our own immortal bard:—“Wee, modest, crimson-tipped flower,Thou’s met me in an evil hour,For I maun crush among the stoureThy slender stem:To save thee now is past my power,Thou bonnie gem?”The spotted orchis is a sweet-scented Highland moorland gem, but right glad I was to find it meeting me on the banks of Northumberland. Far over the borders grew the pretty Scottish bluebell, and on rough patches of ground the trailing lilac rest-harrow.Singly, a sprig of bluebells may not look to much advantage, but growing in great beds and patches, and hanging in heaps to old rained walls, or turf-capped dykes, they are very effective indeed.I had meant to speak in this chapter of many other flowers that grow by the wayside—of the dove’s foot cranebill, of the purple loose-strife, of the sky-blue chicory and the pink-eyed pimpernel, of the golden bird’s-foot trefoil, of purple bugles, of yellow celandine, and of clover red and white. I had even meant to throw in a bird or two—the lark, for instance, that seems to fan the clouds with its quivering wing, the fluting blackbird of woodland and copse, the shrill-voiced mocking mavis, that makes the echoes ring from tree to tree; the cushat, that croodles so mournfully in the thickets of spruce; the wild-screaming curlew, and mayhap the great eagle itself.But I fear that I have already wearied the reader, and so must refrain.Stay though, one word about our Highland heather—one word and I have done. I have found both this and heath growing in England, but never in the same savage luxuriance as on the wilds of the Grampian range. Here you can wander in it waist-deep, if you are not afraid of snakes, and thisErica cineriayou will find of every shade, from white—rare—to pink and darkest crimson:—“Those wastes of heathThat stretch for leagues to lure the bee,Where the wild bird, on pinions strong,Wheels round, and pours his piping song,And timid creatures wander free.”I trust I may be forgiven for making all these poetical quotations, but as I commenced with one from the poet Campbell, so must I end with one from the selfsame bard. It is of the purple heath and heather he is thinking when he writes:—“I love you for lulling me back into dreamsOf the blue Highland mountains, and echoing streams,And of birchen glades breathing their balm.While the deer is seen glancing in sunshine remote,And the deep-mellow gush of the wood-pigeon’s note,Makes music that sweetens the calm.”

“Ye wildlings of Nature, I doat upon you,For ye waft me to summers of old,When the earth teemed around me with fairy delight.And when daisies and buttercups gladdened my sight,Like treasures of silver and gold.”Campbell.“Fair, my own darling, are the flowers in spring...Rathe primrose, violet, and eglantine,Anemone and golden celandine.Not less delicious all the birds that singCarols of joy upon the amorous wing,Earine, in these sweet hours of thine.”Mortimer Collinz (to his wife).

From the day we started from the tree-clad plains of bird-haunted Berks till that on which, after crossing the wild Grampian range, we rolled into the capital of the Scottish Highlands, the Wanderer was gay interiorly with wild and garden flowers.

Did we purchase these flowers? Never once, for, strange as it may seem, I do not think that I ever left a town or village or humblest hamlet without having a bouquet or two presented to me.

Nor were the persons who brought those flowers always such as one would feel inclined to associate with the poetry that floated around their floral gifts.

A rosebud or a lily, in the fair fingers of a beautiful girl, is idyllic; it is in keeping with nature. But what say you to a bunch of sweet-scented carnations, pinks, and lilac pea-blooms trailing over the toil-tinted fingers of some rustic dame of forty?

Would you not accept the latter almost as readily as the former? Yes, you would, especially if she said,—

“Have a few flowers, sir? I know you are fond of them.”

Especially if you knew that a great kindly lump of a heart was beating under a probably not over-fashionable corset, and a real living soul peeping out through a pair of merry laughing eyes.

But rough-looking men, ay, even miners, also brought me flowers.

And children never failed me. Their wee bits of bouquets were oft-times sadly untidy, but their wee bits of hearts were warm, so I never refused them.

Some bairnies were too shy to come right round to the back door of the Wanderer with their floral offerings; they would watch a chance when they imagined I was not looking, lay them on thecoupé, and run.

Which of the wild flowers, I now wonder, did I love the best? I can hardly say. Perhaps the wild roses that trailed for ever over the hedgerows. But have they not their rivals in the climbing honeysuckle and in the bright-eyed creeping convolvulus? Yes, and in a hundred other sweet gems.

Not a flower can I think of, indeed, that does not recall to my mind some pleasant scene.

“Even now what affections the violet awakes;What loved little islands, twice seen in their lakes,Can the wild water-lily restore;What landscapes I read in the primrose’s looks,And what pictures of pebbles and minnowy brooks,In the vetches that tangle the shore.”

If any proof were needed that I had derived the most intense pleasure from the constant companionship of the wild flowers in my caravan rambles, it is surely to be found in the fact that I am writing this chapter, on a bitter winter’s morning in the month of March, sitting in my garden wigwam. When I essayed to commence work to-day I found my writing fluid was frozen, and I could not coax even a dip from the bottle until I had set it over the stove.

And yet it is a morning in March.

Last year at this time the sun was warm, the air was balmy, the crocuses, primroses, snowdrops, and even the tulips were in bloom, and the brown earth was soft and dry. Now it is as hard as adamant. But there is beauty even in this wintry scene. If I take a walk into the garden I find that the hoarfrost brightens everything, and that the tiniest object, even a blade of grass or a withered leaf, is worthy of being admired.

That tall row of spectre-like poplar trees—whether it be winter or summer—is a study in itself. But last night those trees were pointing at the stars with dark skeleton fingers. Those fingers are pointing now at the blue, blue sky, but they seem changed to whitest coral. Those elm trees along the side of yonder field are clothed with a winter foliage of hoarfrost. Seems as though in a single night they had come again into full leaf, and those leaves had been changed by enchantment into snow. As the sunlight streams athwart them they are beautiful beyond compare.

My wild-birds are here in the garden and on the lawns in dozens, huddled in under the dwarf spruces, firs, and laurels, and even cock-robin looks all of a heap.

Hey presto! I have but to shut my eyes and think back, and the scene is changed. I see before me—

A Hedgerow in July.

Where am I? Away up north on a Yorkshire wold. The horses are out and grazing on the clovery sward by the roadside.

How silent it is!

As I lie here on my rugs on thecoupé, I can hear a mole rustling through the grass at the hedge-foot. But the hedgerow itself, and all about it, how refreshing to look upon!

Surely no billhook or axe of woodsman has ever come near it since first it began to grow. Its very irregularity gives it additional charm. The hedge itself is really of blackthorn, but its white or pink-ticked blossoms have faded and given place to haws. Here and there, as far as you can see, up through it grow wild dwarf oak bushes, their foliage crimson or carmine tipped, dwarf plane-trees, with broad sienna leaves, that glitter in the sunshine as if they had been varnished; and elder-trees with big white stars of blossom, and rougher leaves of darkest green. Young elms, too, are yonder, and infant ash trees with stems as black as ink and strangely tinted leaves.

(Plane-trees, so-called, but in reality the Sycamore: the Acer pseudo-platanus of naturalists.)

“The sycamore, capricious in attire,Now green, now tawny, and ere autumn yetHas changed the woods, in scarlet honours bright.”

Here and there wild roses, pale pink or deepest crimson, blush out; here and there are patches of honeysuckle, and here and there waves of the white flowery bryony roll foaming over the green.

In some places the light and tender-leaved woody nightshade, whose berries in bunches of crimson and green are so pretty in autumn, impart a spring-like appearance to this hedgerow.

Nor does the beauty of my hedgerow end here for all along beneath grow rare and lovely grasses, interspersed with star-eyed silenes and gorgeous spikes of the purple stachys, while the adjoining sward is carpeted over with beds of brilliant clover, red and white, with golden bird’s-foot trefoil, and patches of pale blue speedwells.

Bees are very busy all over this glory of colour, humming as they fly from flower to flower, but becoming abruptly silent as soon as their feet touch the silken blossoms. And birds there are too, though now they have for the most part ceased to sing, except the robin and a yellow-hammer, and these birds will continue lilting long after even the autumn tints are on the trees.

These were almost ever with us—one long-drawn delight. For five hundred miles, indeed, they accompanied the Wanderer on her journey. When, at any time, they left us for a space, and stone fences or wooden palings took their place, we were never happy until they again appeared.

From memory I jot down the names of a few of the plants and flowers that mingled with them, or trailed over or through them, constituting their chief charm and beauty.

First on the list, naturally enough, come the rose gems, including the sweetbriar or eglantine, with its deep pink flowers and sweetly-scented leaves; the field-rose, theRosa arvensis, with pale pink blossoms, and the charmingRosa canina, or dog-rose, with petals of a darker red.

As I have already said, these roses grew everywhere among the hedges, in garlands, in wreaths, and in canopies, and always looked their best where the blackthorns had not been disfigured by touch of billhook or pruning shears.

In the earlier spring the hedges had a beauty of their own, being snowed over with clustering blossoms.

The bryony and the honeysuckle I have already mentioned. The green and crimson berries on the former, when the summer begins to wane, are rivalled only by those of the charming woody nightshade.

Regarding the honeysuckle, a naturalist in a London magazine wrote the other day as follows:—

“In the ordinary way, the branches grow out from the parent stem and twine round the first support they meetfront right to left;”—the italics are mine—“but should they fail to find that support, two branches will mutually support each other, one twining from left to right, the other from right to left.”

Now the fact is that the honeysuckle twines from left to right, and if two or three branches are together, as we often find them, it is the weaker who twine round the stronger,—still from left to right.

The wild convolvulus, with its great white bell-like blossoms, that so often stars the hedgerows with a singular beauty, twines always to meet the sun.

TheVicia cracca, or purple climbing vetch, is an object of rare loveliness in July and August. It is a species of clustering-blossomed tare or sweet-pea, with neat, wee green leaves, and flowers of a bluish purple. It is not content with creeping up through the hedge, but it must go crawling along over the top to woo the sunshine.

Later on in summer and early autumn blooms the well-known bramble—the black-fruitedrubus.

No poet, as far as I am aware, has yet celebrated the purple trailing vetch in song, but the bramble has not been forgotten.

Hear Elliott’s exquisite lines:—

“Though woodbines flaunt and roses glowO’er all the fragrant bowers,Thou needst not be ashamed to showThy satin-threaded flowers.For dull the eye, the heart is dull,That cannot feel how fair,Amid all beauty, beautiful,Thy tender blossoms are.* * * * *.“While silent showers are falling slow,And ’mid the general hush,A sweet air lifts the little bough,Low whispering through the bush.The primrose to the grave has gone;The hawthorn flower is dead;The violet by the moss’d grey stoneHath laid her weary head;But thou, wild bramble, back dost bring,In all their beauteous power,The fresh green days of life’s fair spring,And boyhood’s blossoming hour.”

Nestling down by the hedgerow foot, among tall reeds and grey or brown seedling grasses, is many and many a charming wild flower, such as the stachys, the crimson ragged-robbin, with flowers like coral, and the snow-white silene.

Woodland and Copse.

Far away in bonnie Scotland, where the woods are mostly composed of dark, waving, brown-stemmed pine-trees, feathery larches—crimson-tasselled in early spring—or gloomy spruces, there is often an absence of any undergrowth, unless it be heather. But English copses are often one wild tanglement of trailing flowering shrubs, with banks of bracken or ferns.

I have often stopped to admire the marvellous beauty of these copse-lands; their wealth of silent loveliness has more than once brought the tears to my eyes.

So now I refrain from describing them, because any attempt to do so would end in failure. But, reader, have you seen an English woodland carpeted with deep-blue hyacinths, with snowy anemones, or with the sweet wee white pink-streaked sorrel, with its bashful leaves of bending green? Have you seen the golden-tasselled broom waving in the soft spring wind? Or, later on in the season, the tall and stately foxgloves blooming red amidst the greenery of a fern bank? If not, a treat, both rich and rare, may still be yours.

Is it not said that the wild anemone or wind-flower grew from the tears shed by Venus over the grave of Adonis?

“But gentle flowers are born, and bloom around,From every drop that falls upon the ground:Where streams his blood, there blushing springs the rose,And where a tear has dropped a wind-flower blows.”

I think it must be the wood-anemone that is referred to as the snowdrop in that bonnie old Scottish song,My Nannie’s awa’:—

“The snowdrop and primrose our woodlands adorn,And violets blaw in the dews o’ the morn,They pain my sad bosom, sae sweetly they blaw,They mind me on Nannie—and Nannie’s awa’.”

Fields and Moorland.

Turning to these, what oceans of beauty I saw everywhere around me during all the months of my travel!

In May, many of the uplands were covered with the yellow-blooming furze or whins. The black forest, for instance, ’twixt Guildford and Frimley, was a sight worth travelling long miles to look upon; while nothing could excel the fragrance of the perfume shed everywhere around.

The furze lies low to the ground where it has plenty of sunlight, but straggles upwards to seek the light when it grows in the woodlands.

Sweet-scented thistles of every shade—I had almost added “and every shape”—grew plentifully in corners of fields we passed, mostly prickly, but some harmless; lilac, pale pink, dark crimson, and purple; field thistles, milk thistles, melancholy thistles, and nodding thistles.

This latter species I found growing in glorious profusion on the links of Musselburgh, and I quite adorned my caravan with them.

Wherever thistles grow in fields, the tansy is not far off; a showy, yellow, too-hardy flower, without, in my opinion, a vestige of romance about it. Perhaps the sheep think differently, for long after Scottish fields and “baulks” are picked bare, they can always find a pluck of sweet green grass by taking their tongues round a tansy stem.

The yellow meadow vetchling is a beautiful, bright-yellow, pea-like flower, that dearly loves a snug corner under a hedge or bush of furze.

The pink-blossomed geranium-like mallow we all know. It is none the less lovely, however, because common; and here is a hint worth knowing—it looks well in a vase, and will bloom for weeks in water.

But a far more lovely flower, that I first foregathered with, I think, in Yorkshire, is the wild blue geranium, or meadow crane’s-bill. Words alone could not describe its beauty, it must be seen. It mostly grows by the wayside.

Need I even name the corn-marigold, or the blush of the corn-poppies among green growing wheat, or the exquisitely lovely sainfoin, that sheds its crimson beauty over many a southern field; or the blue and charming corn-flower, that delights to bloom amid the ripening grain?

Oh! dear farmer, call it not a weed, hint not at its being a hurt-sickle—rather admire and love it.

Nay, but the farmer will not, he has no romance about him, and will quote me lines like these:—

“Bluebottle, thee my numbers fain would raise,And thy complexion challenge all my praise,Thy countenance like summer skies is fair;But ah! how different thy vile manners are.A treacherous guest, destruction thou dost bringTo th’ inhospitable field where thou dost spring,Thou blunt’st the very reaper’s sickle, and soIn life and death becom’st the farmer’s foe.”

But cowslips, and buttercups—

“The winking Mary-buds beginTo ope their golden eyes.”Shakespeare.

—And the chaste and pretty ox-eye daisy, even a farmer will not object to my adoring, for the very names of these bring to his mind sleek-sided cattle wading in spring time knee-deep in fields of green sweet grass.

And what shall I say of gowan or mountain-daisy? Oh! what should I say, but repeat the lines of our own immortal bard:—

“Wee, modest, crimson-tipped flower,Thou’s met me in an evil hour,For I maun crush among the stoureThy slender stem:To save thee now is past my power,Thou bonnie gem?”

The spotted orchis is a sweet-scented Highland moorland gem, but right glad I was to find it meeting me on the banks of Northumberland. Far over the borders grew the pretty Scottish bluebell, and on rough patches of ground the trailing lilac rest-harrow.

Singly, a sprig of bluebells may not look to much advantage, but growing in great beds and patches, and hanging in heaps to old rained walls, or turf-capped dykes, they are very effective indeed.

I had meant to speak in this chapter of many other flowers that grow by the wayside—of the dove’s foot cranebill, of the purple loose-strife, of the sky-blue chicory and the pink-eyed pimpernel, of the golden bird’s-foot trefoil, of purple bugles, of yellow celandine, and of clover red and white. I had even meant to throw in a bird or two—the lark, for instance, that seems to fan the clouds with its quivering wing, the fluting blackbird of woodland and copse, the shrill-voiced mocking mavis, that makes the echoes ring from tree to tree; the cushat, that croodles so mournfully in the thickets of spruce; the wild-screaming curlew, and mayhap the great eagle itself.

But I fear that I have already wearied the reader, and so must refrain.

Stay though, one word about our Highland heather—one word and I have done. I have found both this and heath growing in England, but never in the same savage luxuriance as on the wilds of the Grampian range. Here you can wander in it waist-deep, if you are not afraid of snakes, and thisErica cineriayou will find of every shade, from white—rare—to pink and darkest crimson:—

“Those wastes of heathThat stretch for leagues to lure the bee,Where the wild bird, on pinions strong,Wheels round, and pours his piping song,And timid creatures wander free.”

I trust I may be forgiven for making all these poetical quotations, but as I commenced with one from the poet Campbell, so must I end with one from the selfsame bard. It is of the purple heath and heather he is thinking when he writes:—

“I love you for lulling me back into dreamsOf the blue Highland mountains, and echoing streams,And of birchen glades breathing their balm.While the deer is seen glancing in sunshine remote,And the deep-mellow gush of the wood-pigeon’s note,Makes music that sweetens the calm.”

Chapter Twenty Five.A Chapter about Children—Children in Bouquets—Children by the “sad sea-wave”—sweet maudie brewer—wee dickie ellis—the miner’s sprite.“On these laughing rosy facesThere are no deep lines of sin;None of passion’s dreary traces,That betray the wounds within.”Tupper.As much even as the wild flowers themselves were the children a feature in the seemingly interminable panorama, that flitted past me in my long tour in the Wanderer. The wild flowers were everywhere; by wayside, on hillside, by streamlet, in copse, hiding in fairy nooks among the brackens in the woodlands, carpeting mossy banks in the pine forests, floating on the lakes, nodding to the running brooklets, creeping over ruined walls and fences, and starring the hedgerows,—wild flowers, wild flowers everywhere.Wild flowers everywhere, and children everywhere.Country children: minding cows or sheep or pigs; trotting Blondin-like along the parapets of high bridges; riding or swinging on gateways; stringing daisies on flowery meads; paddling in stream or in burn; fishing by lonely tarns; swinging in the tree-tops; or boring head first through hedges of blackthorn and furze.Village children: sitting in dozens on door-steps; a-squat on the footpath, nursing babies as big as themselves; at play on the walks or in the street midst; toddling solemnly off to school, with well-washed faces, and book-laden; or rushing merrily home again, with faces all begrimed with mud and tears.Seaside children: out in boats, rocked in the cradle of the deep; bathing in dozens, swimming, sprawling, splashing, whooping; squatting among the seaweed; dabbling in pools, or clinging to the cliffs with all the tenacity of crabs.Children everywhere, all along. Curly-pated children, bare-legged children, well-dressed children, and children in rags, but all shouting, screaming, laughing, smiling, or singing, and all as happy, seemingly, as the summer’s day was long.“Harmless, happy little treasures,Full of truth, and trust, and mirth;Richest wealth and purest pleasuresIn this mean and guilty earth.“But yours is the sunny dimple,Radiant with untutored smiles;Yours the heart, sincere and simple,Innocent of selfish wiles.“Yours the natural curling tresses,Prattling tongues and shyness coy;Tottering steps and kind caresses,Pure with health, and warm with joy.”Look at that little innocent yonder in that cottage doorway. There is a well-kept garden in front of the house, but not a flower in it more sweet than she. Round-faced, curly-tressed, dimpled chin and cheeks and knee. It is early morning, she has rushed to the door in her little night-dress; one stocking is on, the other she waves wildly aloft as she cheers the Wanderer.Here at a village door is a group—a bouquet you may say—worth looking it. Three such pretty children, seated in a doorway, on the steps. They are dressed in blue, with white socks and fairy-like caps, and the oldest is holding a bald-headed crowing baby in her lap.Here is another tableau: three pretty little well-dressed maidens, hand-in-hand, dancing and whirling in Indian circle round a hole which has been dug in the green sward; a fourth seated close by the hole, flicking the dust up in clouds with a green bough, and giving each a full share of it. Never mind the lace-edged dresses, heed not the snow-white pinafores, round and round and round they go, and how they laugh and shout, and enjoy it!And here is a bouquet from Musselburgh, though perhaps it has a somewhat fishy flavour. A group of chubby children on the beach, among the somewhat black sand; one has a large crab-shell with a string to it—this is his cart, and it is laden with cockle-shells and star-fish; another boy has a dead eel on a string; a baby is lying on its face digging holes in the sand with a razor shell, and a little girl is nursing a cod’s head for a doll, and has dressed it up with seaweed. They have bare heads and feet, and smudgy faces, but dear me! they do look happy!Five little kilted boys, squatting on the grass; between them is a round kettle pot half-filled with porridge, and each holds in his hand a “cogie” of milk. But they start to their feet as the Wanderer rolls past, wave aloft their horn spoons, and shout till we are out of sight.Here is a little cherub of some seven summers old. He very likely belongs to that pretty cottage whose redbrick gable peeps out through a cloudland of trees yonder. He has a barrow, and it is nearly full, for the boy has been scavenging on the road, gathering material to make the mushrooms grow in his father’s garden. Right in the centre of this he has dug a nest, and in this nest is seated his baby brother. He is telling him a story, and the baby brother is crowing and kicking, and looking all over so delighted and joyful in his questionable nest, that one almost envies him. That youngstermayemigrate some day, and hemaybecome President of America yet. When I think of that I cannot help feeling a kind of respect for him.The most smudgy-faced children I noticed on my tour were, I think, some of those in the outlying villages of the North Riding of Yorks. Of course, they always came trooping out to view the caravan, from cottage doors, from garden gates, from schools, and from playgrounds, the foremost calling aloud to those behind to come quick, to run, for a show was coming.If we happened to stop, they would gather around us and stare with saucer eyes and open mouths astonished, expectant. If we drove on quickly, they speedily set up an impromptu “Hip, hip, hoor—ay—ay!” and waved their arms or ragged caps in the air.Talk about the great unwashed! These were the little unwashed, and a far larger section of the public than their bigger brethren.Do not blame the poor things because their faces are not over cleanly. It may not even be the fault of their parents. Early of a morning we often met children going toddling off to school, with books and slates, and, mind you, with faces that positively glistened and reflected the sunbeams, the result of recent ablutions, and a plentiful use of soap. We met school children again coming from school of an evening, but sadly different in facial aspect, for lo! and alas! grief soon begins of a morning with a child, and tears begin to flow, so cheeks get wet, and are wiped, and dust begrimes them, and long ere evening the average boy’s face is woefully be-smudged.I found a little Scotch boy once standing with his face against a hayrick weeping bitterly. I daresay he had been chastised for some fault and had come here to indulge in the luxury of a good cry. But would he own it? No, he was too Scotch for that.“What are ye greetin’ (weeping) about, my wee laddie?” I said, pulling him round.“I’m no greetin’,” he replied through his tears.“It looks unco’ like it,” I ventured to remark.“I tell you, si-si-sir,” he sobbed, “I’mnogaga—greetin’. I’m only just letting—“‘The tears doon fa’,For Jock o’ Hadedean.’”I gave him a penny on the spot, and that changed his tune.Children by the “Sad Sea-Wave.”There is nothing sad about the sea from a child’s point of view. On many a long voyage I have known children be the light and the life of a ship fore and aft.Coming from the Cape once I remember we had just one child passenger, a fair-haired, blue-eyed, curly-polled little rascal whom the sailors had baptised Tommy Tadpole. He was a saloon passenger, but was quite as often forward among the men on deck or down below. Not more than seven years of age, I often wondered he did not have his neck broken, for even in half a gale of wind he would be rushing about like a mad thing, or up and down the steep iron ladder that led to the engine room. He had a mother on board, and a nurse as well, but he was too slippery for either, and for the matter of that everyone on board was Tommy’s nurse or playmate.Catch-me-who-catch-can was the boy’s favourite game, and at this he would keep three sailors busy for half-an-hour, and still manage to elude their grasp. How he doubled and bolted and dived, to be sure, round the binnacle, round the capstan, over the winch, under the spare anchor, down one ladder and up another—it was marvellous! One day I remember he was fairly caught; he got up into the main-rigging, and actually through the lubber hole into the main-top. Ah! but Tommy couldn’t get back, and there he sat for some time, for all the world like that sweet little cherub who sits up aloft to look after the life of poor Jack, till a sturdy seaman ran up, and Tommy rode down on his shoulder.And the waves were never high enough, nor the wind stormy enough, to frighten Tommy Tadpole.But country children on a visit to the seashore find fun and joy and something to laugh at in every breaker or tumbling wave.A storm was raging at Brighton the day after my arrival there in the Wanderer. Great seas were thundering in upon the shingly beach and leaping madly over pier and wall.“Look, look!” cried my little daughter Inez delightedly, “how the waves are smoking!”“Surely,” she added, “great whales must be in the water to make it wobble so.”But it was great fun to her to watch them “wobbling,” all the same.She crowed with joy at the scene.“Oh! they do make me laugh so,” she cried, clapping her tiny hands, “they are such fun!” Yes, and for weeks afterwards, whenever she thought of that storm-tossed ocean she would laugh.But really you can find everlasting amusement at the seaside in summer or in autumn—supposing you are a child, I mean. Shingle is not very nice to dig among, perhaps, with a wooden spade, but then you find such quantities of pretty stones and shells among it, and morsels of coloured glass worn round by the action of the waves. You cannot build a very satisfactory house or fortification with the smaller kinds of shingle, but you can throw spadefuls of it in all directions—over your companions or over your nurse, and if a shower of it does fall on that old gentleman’s long hat, what matters it whether he be angry or not? it was fun to hear it rattle, and you would do it again and again if you only dared.If you are permitted to take off shoes and stockings and tuck up your dress, what a glorious treat to wade on the soft sand, and feel the merry wee waves playing soft and warm about your legs! If you cannot have shoes and stockings off, then you can chase each receding wave, and let the advancing ones chase you. This will make you laugh, and if one should overtake you and go swilling round your ankles, why, what matters it? to listen to the water jerking in your boots at every step is in itself good fun.There is endless amusement to be got out of seaweed, too, and if you have a big dog the fun will be fast and furious.Perhaps he is a large Newfoundland, like our Hurricane Bob. By the seaside Bob is always on the best of terms with himself and every other living creature. You can bury him in the sand all but the nose; you can clothe him from head to tail with broad bands of wet seaweed, he enjoys it all, takes everything in good part. He will go splashing and dashing into the sea after a stick or a stone, and if you were to fall plump into the sea yourself he would jump after you, carry you out, and lay you on the beach in the most businesslike fashion imaginable; then shake himself, the water that flies from his great jacket of jet making rainbows all round him in the sunshine.No; there is no sadness about the sea-wave in the happy, merry days of childhood.Littlehampton is altogether a children’s watering-place. There they were by the dozen and score, sailing yachts in little pools, flying kites and building castles, playing at horses, riding on donkeys, gathering shells and seaweed, dancing, singing, laughing, screaming, racing, chasing, paddling and puddling, and all as happy as happy could be.I was always pleased enough to have interesting children come and see me; whether they brought little bouquets of flowers with them—which they often did—or not, they always brought sunshine.Let me give just one or two specimens of my juvenile visitors. Icouldgive a hundred.Sweet Maudie Brewer.I could not help qualifying her name with a pretty adjective from the first moment I saw her. Not that Maudie is a very beautiful child, but so winning and engaging, and exceedingly old-fashioned. I made her acquaintance at the inn where my horses were stabled. She is an orphan—virtually, at all events—but the landlord of the hotel is exceedingly good to her, and very proud also of his wee six-year-old Maudie.It is as a conversationalist that Maudie shines. She has no shyness, but talks like an old, old world-wise mite of a woman.“Now,” she said, after we had talked on a variety of topics, “come into the parlour and I shall play and sing to you?”As she took me by the hand I had to go, but had I known the little treat I was to have I should have gone more willingly. For not only can Maudie sing well, but she plays airs and waltzes in a way that quite surprised me; and I found myself standing by the piano turning over the leaves for this child of six summers as seriously as if she had been seventeen. That was Maudie Brewer.Wee Dickie Ellis.Dickie is another old-fashioned child, a handsome, healthful country boy, who lives in Yorkshire. Very chatty and very free was Dickie, but by no means impertinent. Age about seven. But his age does not cost Dickie a thought, for when I asked him how old he was, he said it was either six or sixteen, but he wasn’t sure which. He admired the caravan, and admired Hurricane Bob, but it was my talking cockatoo that specially took his fancy.He had not been gone half-an-hour till I found him on the steps again.“I’ve just coome,” he said, “to have another look at t’ould Poll parrot.”Polly took to him, danced to him and sang to him, and finally make a great grab at his nose.Dickie was back in an hour.“Coome again,” he explained, “to have a look at t’ould Poll parrot.”I thought I was rid of him now for the day; but after sunset, lo! Dickie appeared once more.“I’m gangin’ to bed noo,” he said, “and I want to say ‘good-night’ to t’ould Poll parrot.”And next morning, before I started, up came Dickie sure enough.“Just coome,” he sadly remarked, “to have t’last look at t’ould Poll parrot.”The Miner’s Sprite.The Wanderer was lying in a quiet meadow in a mining district. It was a lovely summer’s evening; tall trees and a church tower not far off stood out dark against a crimson sky, for the sun had but just gone down. I was seated reading on the back steps, and all alone.“Peas, sir,” said a voice close to me; “peas, sir.”“I don’t buy peas,” I replied, looking up in some surprise, for I’d heard no footstep.“Peas, sir,” persisted the child—“I mean, if oo peas, sir, I’ve come to see your talavan.”What a sprite she looked! What a gnome! Her little face and hands and bare legs and feet were black with coal dust, only her lips were pink. When she smiled she showed two rows of little pearly teeth, and her eyes were very large and lustrous. I took all this in at a glance, and could not help noticing the smallness of her feet and hands and ears.“Take my hand and help me up the stails. Be twick.” I did as I was told, and everything inside was duly criticised and admired. She sat on a footstool, and told me a deal about herself. She spent all the day in the mine, she said, playing and singing, and everybody loved her, and was so “dood” to her.She lived with her pa and ma in a cottage she pointed to.“But,” she added, “my pa isn’t my real faddel (father), and ma isn’t my real muddel (mother).” Here was a mystery.“And where is your real father and mother?”“Oh!” she replied, “I never had a real faddel and muddel.”As she was going away she said,—“You may tiss me, and tome and see me.”I could not see my way to kiss so black a face, but I promised to go and see her at her “faddel’s” cottage. I did so in an hour, but only to find the mystery that hung around my little gnome deepened.My little gnome was a gnome no more, but a fairy, washed and clean and neatly dressed, and with a wealth of sunny hair floating over her shoulders. The miner himself was clean, too, and the cottage was the pink of tidiness and order. There were even flowers in vases, and a canary in a gilded cage hanging in the window.Though I stayed and talked for quite a long time, I did not succeed in solving the mystery.“She ain’t ours, sir, little Looie ain’t,” said the sturdy miner. “Come to us in a queer way, but lo! sir, how we does love her, to be sure!”

“On these laughing rosy facesThere are no deep lines of sin;None of passion’s dreary traces,That betray the wounds within.”Tupper.

As much even as the wild flowers themselves were the children a feature in the seemingly interminable panorama, that flitted past me in my long tour in the Wanderer. The wild flowers were everywhere; by wayside, on hillside, by streamlet, in copse, hiding in fairy nooks among the brackens in the woodlands, carpeting mossy banks in the pine forests, floating on the lakes, nodding to the running brooklets, creeping over ruined walls and fences, and starring the hedgerows,—wild flowers, wild flowers everywhere.

Wild flowers everywhere, and children everywhere.

Country children: minding cows or sheep or pigs; trotting Blondin-like along the parapets of high bridges; riding or swinging on gateways; stringing daisies on flowery meads; paddling in stream or in burn; fishing by lonely tarns; swinging in the tree-tops; or boring head first through hedges of blackthorn and furze.

Village children: sitting in dozens on door-steps; a-squat on the footpath, nursing babies as big as themselves; at play on the walks or in the street midst; toddling solemnly off to school, with well-washed faces, and book-laden; or rushing merrily home again, with faces all begrimed with mud and tears.

Seaside children: out in boats, rocked in the cradle of the deep; bathing in dozens, swimming, sprawling, splashing, whooping; squatting among the seaweed; dabbling in pools, or clinging to the cliffs with all the tenacity of crabs.

Children everywhere, all along. Curly-pated children, bare-legged children, well-dressed children, and children in rags, but all shouting, screaming, laughing, smiling, or singing, and all as happy, seemingly, as the summer’s day was long.

“Harmless, happy little treasures,Full of truth, and trust, and mirth;Richest wealth and purest pleasuresIn this mean and guilty earth.“But yours is the sunny dimple,Radiant with untutored smiles;Yours the heart, sincere and simple,Innocent of selfish wiles.“Yours the natural curling tresses,Prattling tongues and shyness coy;Tottering steps and kind caresses,Pure with health, and warm with joy.”

Look at that little innocent yonder in that cottage doorway. There is a well-kept garden in front of the house, but not a flower in it more sweet than she. Round-faced, curly-tressed, dimpled chin and cheeks and knee. It is early morning, she has rushed to the door in her little night-dress; one stocking is on, the other she waves wildly aloft as she cheers the Wanderer.

Here at a village door is a group—a bouquet you may say—worth looking it. Three such pretty children, seated in a doorway, on the steps. They are dressed in blue, with white socks and fairy-like caps, and the oldest is holding a bald-headed crowing baby in her lap.

Here is another tableau: three pretty little well-dressed maidens, hand-in-hand, dancing and whirling in Indian circle round a hole which has been dug in the green sward; a fourth seated close by the hole, flicking the dust up in clouds with a green bough, and giving each a full share of it. Never mind the lace-edged dresses, heed not the snow-white pinafores, round and round and round they go, and how they laugh and shout, and enjoy it!

And here is a bouquet from Musselburgh, though perhaps it has a somewhat fishy flavour. A group of chubby children on the beach, among the somewhat black sand; one has a large crab-shell with a string to it—this is his cart, and it is laden with cockle-shells and star-fish; another boy has a dead eel on a string; a baby is lying on its face digging holes in the sand with a razor shell, and a little girl is nursing a cod’s head for a doll, and has dressed it up with seaweed. They have bare heads and feet, and smudgy faces, but dear me! they do look happy!

Five little kilted boys, squatting on the grass; between them is a round kettle pot half-filled with porridge, and each holds in his hand a “cogie” of milk. But they start to their feet as the Wanderer rolls past, wave aloft their horn spoons, and shout till we are out of sight.

Here is a little cherub of some seven summers old. He very likely belongs to that pretty cottage whose redbrick gable peeps out through a cloudland of trees yonder. He has a barrow, and it is nearly full, for the boy has been scavenging on the road, gathering material to make the mushrooms grow in his father’s garden. Right in the centre of this he has dug a nest, and in this nest is seated his baby brother. He is telling him a story, and the baby brother is crowing and kicking, and looking all over so delighted and joyful in his questionable nest, that one almost envies him. That youngstermayemigrate some day, and hemaybecome President of America yet. When I think of that I cannot help feeling a kind of respect for him.

The most smudgy-faced children I noticed on my tour were, I think, some of those in the outlying villages of the North Riding of Yorks. Of course, they always came trooping out to view the caravan, from cottage doors, from garden gates, from schools, and from playgrounds, the foremost calling aloud to those behind to come quick, to run, for a show was coming.

If we happened to stop, they would gather around us and stare with saucer eyes and open mouths astonished, expectant. If we drove on quickly, they speedily set up an impromptu “Hip, hip, hoor—ay—ay!” and waved their arms or ragged caps in the air.

Talk about the great unwashed! These were the little unwashed, and a far larger section of the public than their bigger brethren.

Do not blame the poor things because their faces are not over cleanly. It may not even be the fault of their parents. Early of a morning we often met children going toddling off to school, with books and slates, and, mind you, with faces that positively glistened and reflected the sunbeams, the result of recent ablutions, and a plentiful use of soap. We met school children again coming from school of an evening, but sadly different in facial aspect, for lo! and alas! grief soon begins of a morning with a child, and tears begin to flow, so cheeks get wet, and are wiped, and dust begrimes them, and long ere evening the average boy’s face is woefully be-smudged.

I found a little Scotch boy once standing with his face against a hayrick weeping bitterly. I daresay he had been chastised for some fault and had come here to indulge in the luxury of a good cry. But would he own it? No, he was too Scotch for that.

“What are ye greetin’ (weeping) about, my wee laddie?” I said, pulling him round.

“I’m no greetin’,” he replied through his tears.

“It looks unco’ like it,” I ventured to remark.

“I tell you, si-si-sir,” he sobbed, “I’mnogaga—greetin’. I’m only just letting—

“‘The tears doon fa’,For Jock o’ Hadedean.’”

I gave him a penny on the spot, and that changed his tune.

Children by the “Sad Sea-Wave.”

There is nothing sad about the sea from a child’s point of view. On many a long voyage I have known children be the light and the life of a ship fore and aft.

Coming from the Cape once I remember we had just one child passenger, a fair-haired, blue-eyed, curly-polled little rascal whom the sailors had baptised Tommy Tadpole. He was a saloon passenger, but was quite as often forward among the men on deck or down below. Not more than seven years of age, I often wondered he did not have his neck broken, for even in half a gale of wind he would be rushing about like a mad thing, or up and down the steep iron ladder that led to the engine room. He had a mother on board, and a nurse as well, but he was too slippery for either, and for the matter of that everyone on board was Tommy’s nurse or playmate.

Catch-me-who-catch-can was the boy’s favourite game, and at this he would keep three sailors busy for half-an-hour, and still manage to elude their grasp. How he doubled and bolted and dived, to be sure, round the binnacle, round the capstan, over the winch, under the spare anchor, down one ladder and up another—it was marvellous! One day I remember he was fairly caught; he got up into the main-rigging, and actually through the lubber hole into the main-top. Ah! but Tommy couldn’t get back, and there he sat for some time, for all the world like that sweet little cherub who sits up aloft to look after the life of poor Jack, till a sturdy seaman ran up, and Tommy rode down on his shoulder.

And the waves were never high enough, nor the wind stormy enough, to frighten Tommy Tadpole.

But country children on a visit to the seashore find fun and joy and something to laugh at in every breaker or tumbling wave.

A storm was raging at Brighton the day after my arrival there in the Wanderer. Great seas were thundering in upon the shingly beach and leaping madly over pier and wall.

“Look, look!” cried my little daughter Inez delightedly, “how the waves are smoking!”

“Surely,” she added, “great whales must be in the water to make it wobble so.”

But it was great fun to her to watch them “wobbling,” all the same.

She crowed with joy at the scene.

“Oh! they do make me laugh so,” she cried, clapping her tiny hands, “they are such fun!” Yes, and for weeks afterwards, whenever she thought of that storm-tossed ocean she would laugh.

But really you can find everlasting amusement at the seaside in summer or in autumn—supposing you are a child, I mean. Shingle is not very nice to dig among, perhaps, with a wooden spade, but then you find such quantities of pretty stones and shells among it, and morsels of coloured glass worn round by the action of the waves. You cannot build a very satisfactory house or fortification with the smaller kinds of shingle, but you can throw spadefuls of it in all directions—over your companions or over your nurse, and if a shower of it does fall on that old gentleman’s long hat, what matters it whether he be angry or not? it was fun to hear it rattle, and you would do it again and again if you only dared.

If you are permitted to take off shoes and stockings and tuck up your dress, what a glorious treat to wade on the soft sand, and feel the merry wee waves playing soft and warm about your legs! If you cannot have shoes and stockings off, then you can chase each receding wave, and let the advancing ones chase you. This will make you laugh, and if one should overtake you and go swilling round your ankles, why, what matters it? to listen to the water jerking in your boots at every step is in itself good fun.

There is endless amusement to be got out of seaweed, too, and if you have a big dog the fun will be fast and furious.

Perhaps he is a large Newfoundland, like our Hurricane Bob. By the seaside Bob is always on the best of terms with himself and every other living creature. You can bury him in the sand all but the nose; you can clothe him from head to tail with broad bands of wet seaweed, he enjoys it all, takes everything in good part. He will go splashing and dashing into the sea after a stick or a stone, and if you were to fall plump into the sea yourself he would jump after you, carry you out, and lay you on the beach in the most businesslike fashion imaginable; then shake himself, the water that flies from his great jacket of jet making rainbows all round him in the sunshine.

No; there is no sadness about the sea-wave in the happy, merry days of childhood.

Littlehampton is altogether a children’s watering-place. There they were by the dozen and score, sailing yachts in little pools, flying kites and building castles, playing at horses, riding on donkeys, gathering shells and seaweed, dancing, singing, laughing, screaming, racing, chasing, paddling and puddling, and all as happy as happy could be.

I was always pleased enough to have interesting children come and see me; whether they brought little bouquets of flowers with them—which they often did—or not, they always brought sunshine.

Let me give just one or two specimens of my juvenile visitors. Icouldgive a hundred.

Sweet Maudie Brewer.

I could not help qualifying her name with a pretty adjective from the first moment I saw her. Not that Maudie is a very beautiful child, but so winning and engaging, and exceedingly old-fashioned. I made her acquaintance at the inn where my horses were stabled. She is an orphan—virtually, at all events—but the landlord of the hotel is exceedingly good to her, and very proud also of his wee six-year-old Maudie.

It is as a conversationalist that Maudie shines. She has no shyness, but talks like an old, old world-wise mite of a woman.

“Now,” she said, after we had talked on a variety of topics, “come into the parlour and I shall play and sing to you?”

As she took me by the hand I had to go, but had I known the little treat I was to have I should have gone more willingly. For not only can Maudie sing well, but she plays airs and waltzes in a way that quite surprised me; and I found myself standing by the piano turning over the leaves for this child of six summers as seriously as if she had been seventeen. That was Maudie Brewer.

Wee Dickie Ellis.

Dickie is another old-fashioned child, a handsome, healthful country boy, who lives in Yorkshire. Very chatty and very free was Dickie, but by no means impertinent. Age about seven. But his age does not cost Dickie a thought, for when I asked him how old he was, he said it was either six or sixteen, but he wasn’t sure which. He admired the caravan, and admired Hurricane Bob, but it was my talking cockatoo that specially took his fancy.

He had not been gone half-an-hour till I found him on the steps again.

“I’ve just coome,” he said, “to have another look at t’ould Poll parrot.”

Polly took to him, danced to him and sang to him, and finally make a great grab at his nose.

Dickie was back in an hour.

“Coome again,” he explained, “to have a look at t’ould Poll parrot.”

I thought I was rid of him now for the day; but after sunset, lo! Dickie appeared once more.

“I’m gangin’ to bed noo,” he said, “and I want to say ‘good-night’ to t’ould Poll parrot.”

And next morning, before I started, up came Dickie sure enough.

“Just coome,” he sadly remarked, “to have t’last look at t’ould Poll parrot.”

The Miner’s Sprite.

The Wanderer was lying in a quiet meadow in a mining district. It was a lovely summer’s evening; tall trees and a church tower not far off stood out dark against a crimson sky, for the sun had but just gone down. I was seated reading on the back steps, and all alone.

“Peas, sir,” said a voice close to me; “peas, sir.”

“I don’t buy peas,” I replied, looking up in some surprise, for I’d heard no footstep.

“Peas, sir,” persisted the child—“I mean, if oo peas, sir, I’ve come to see your talavan.”

What a sprite she looked! What a gnome! Her little face and hands and bare legs and feet were black with coal dust, only her lips were pink. When she smiled she showed two rows of little pearly teeth, and her eyes were very large and lustrous. I took all this in at a glance, and could not help noticing the smallness of her feet and hands and ears.

“Take my hand and help me up the stails. Be twick.” I did as I was told, and everything inside was duly criticised and admired. She sat on a footstool, and told me a deal about herself. She spent all the day in the mine, she said, playing and singing, and everybody loved her, and was so “dood” to her.

She lived with her pa and ma in a cottage she pointed to.

“But,” she added, “my pa isn’t my real faddel (father), and ma isn’t my real muddel (mother).” Here was a mystery.

“And where is your real father and mother?”

“Oh!” she replied, “I never had a real faddel and muddel.”

As she was going away she said,—

“You may tiss me, and tome and see me.”

I could not see my way to kiss so black a face, but I promised to go and see her at her “faddel’s” cottage. I did so in an hour, but only to find the mystery that hung around my little gnome deepened.

My little gnome was a gnome no more, but a fairy, washed and clean and neatly dressed, and with a wealth of sunny hair floating over her shoulders. The miner himself was clean, too, and the cottage was the pink of tidiness and order. There were even flowers in vases, and a canary in a gilded cage hanging in the window.

Though I stayed and talked for quite a long time, I did not succeed in solving the mystery.

“She ain’t ours, sir, little Looie ain’t,” said the sturdy miner. “Come to us in a queer way, but lo! sir, how we does love her, to be sure!”

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