Little Rivers [29]
I must put on the Mackintosh trousers and wade out over my
hips into the water, and circumambulate the pond, throwing the flies
as far as possible toward the middle, and feeling my way carefully
along the bottom with the long net-handle, while Sandy danced on
the bank in an agony of apprehension lest his Predestinated Opportunity
should step into a deep hole and be drowned. It was a curious fact
in natural history that on the lochs with boats the trout were in
the shallow water, but in the boatless lochs they were away out in
the depths. "Juist the total depraivity o' troots," said Sandy,
"an' terrible fateegin'."
Sandy had an aversion to commit himself to definite statements on
any subject not theological. If you asked him how long the
morning's tramp would be, it was "no verra long, juist a bit ayant
the hull yonner." And if, at the end of the seventh mile, you
complained that it was much too far, he would never do more than
admit that "it micht be shorter." If you called him to rejoice
over a trout that weighed close upon two pounds, he allowed that it
was "no bad--but there's bigger anes i' the loch gin we cud but
wile them oot." And at lunch-time, when we turned out a full
basket of shining fish on the heather, the most that he would say,
while his eyes snapped with joy and pride, was, "Aweel, we canna
complain, the day."
Then he would gather an armful of dried heather-stems for kindling,
and dig out a few roots and crooked limbs of the long-vanished
forest from the dry, brown, peaty soil, and make our campfire of
prehistoric wood--just for the pleasant, homelike look of the
blaze--and sit down beside it to eat our lunch. Heat is the least
of the benefits that man gets from fire. It is the sign of
cheerfulness and good comradeship. I would not willingly satisfy
my hunger, even in a summer nooning, without a little flame burning
on a rustic altar to consecrate and enliven the feast. When the
bread and cheese were finished and the pipes were filled with
Virginia tobacco, Sandy would begin to tell me, very solemnly and
respectfully, about the mistakes I had made in the fishing that
day, and mourn over the fact that the largest fish had not been
hooked. There was a strong strain of pessimism in Sandy, and he
enjoyed this part of the sport immensely.
But he was at his best in the walk home through the lingering
twilight, when the murmur of the sea trembled through the air, and
the incense of burning peat floated up from the cottages, and the
stars blossomed one by one in the pale-green sky. Then Sandy
dandered on at his ease down the hills, and discoursed of things in
heaven and earth. He was an unconscious follower of the theology
of the Reverend John Jasper, of Richmond, Virginia, and rejected
the Copernican theory of the universe as inconsistent with the
history of Joshua. "Gin the sun doesna muve," said he, "what for
wad Joshua be tellin' him to stond steel? 'A wad suner beleeve
there was a mistak' in the veesible heevens than ae fault in the
Guid Buik." Whereupon we held long discourse of astronomy and
inspiration; but Sandy concluded it with a philosophic word which
left little to be said: "Aweel, yon teelescope is a wonnerful
deescovery; but 'a dinna think the less o' the Baible."
III.
WHITE HEATHER.
Memory is a capricious and arbitrary creature. You never can tell
what pebble she will pick up from the shore of life to keep among
her treasures, or what inconspicuous flower of the field she will
preserve as the symbol of
"Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears."
She has her own scale of values for these mementos, and knows
nothing of the market price of precious stones or the costly
splendour of rare orchids. The thing that pleases her is the thing
that she will hold fast. And yet I do not doubt that the most
important things are always the best remembered;
hips into the water, and circumambulate the pond, throwing the flies
as far as possible toward the middle, and feeling my way carefully
along the bottom with the long net-handle, while Sandy danced on
the bank in an agony of apprehension lest his Predestinated Opportunity
should step into a deep hole and be drowned. It was a curious fact
in natural history that on the lochs with boats the trout were in
the shallow water, but in the boatless lochs they were away out in
the depths. "Juist the total depraivity o' troots," said Sandy,
"an' terrible fateegin'."
Sandy had an aversion to commit himself to definite statements on
any subject not theological. If you asked him how long the
morning's tramp would be, it was "no verra long, juist a bit ayant
the hull yonner." And if, at the end of the seventh mile, you
complained that it was much too far, he would never do more than
admit that "it micht be shorter." If you called him to rejoice
over a trout that weighed close upon two pounds, he allowed that it
was "no bad--but there's bigger anes i' the loch gin we cud but
wile them oot." And at lunch-time, when we turned out a full
basket of shining fish on the heather, the most that he would say,
while his eyes snapped with joy and pride, was, "Aweel, we canna
complain, the day."
Then he would gather an armful of dried heather-stems for kindling,
and dig out a few roots and crooked limbs of the long-vanished
forest from the dry, brown, peaty soil, and make our campfire of
prehistoric wood--just for the pleasant, homelike look of the
blaze--and sit down beside it to eat our lunch. Heat is the least
of the benefits that man gets from fire. It is the sign of
cheerfulness and good comradeship. I would not willingly satisfy
my hunger, even in a summer nooning, without a little flame burning
on a rustic altar to consecrate and enliven the feast. When the
bread and cheese were finished and the pipes were filled with
Virginia tobacco, Sandy would begin to tell me, very solemnly and
respectfully, about the mistakes I had made in the fishing that
day, and mourn over the fact that the largest fish had not been
hooked. There was a strong strain of pessimism in Sandy, and he
enjoyed this part of the sport immensely.
But he was at his best in the walk home through the lingering
twilight, when the murmur of the sea trembled through the air, and
the incense of burning peat floated up from the cottages, and the
stars blossomed one by one in the pale-green sky. Then Sandy
dandered on at his ease down the hills, and discoursed of things in
heaven and earth. He was an unconscious follower of the theology
of the Reverend John Jasper, of Richmond, Virginia, and rejected
the Copernican theory of the universe as inconsistent with the
history of Joshua. "Gin the sun doesna muve," said he, "what for
wad Joshua be tellin' him to stond steel? 'A wad suner beleeve
there was a mistak' in the veesible heevens than ae fault in the
Guid Buik." Whereupon we held long discourse of astronomy and
inspiration; but Sandy concluded it with a philosophic word which
left little to be said: "Aweel, yon teelescope is a wonnerful
deescovery; but 'a dinna think the less o' the Baible."
III.
WHITE HEATHER.
Memory is a capricious and arbitrary creature. You never can tell
what pebble she will pick up from the shore of life to keep among
her treasures, or what inconspicuous flower of the field she will
preserve as the symbol of
"Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears."
She has her own scale of values for these mementos, and knows
nothing of the market price of precious stones or the costly
splendour of rare orchids. The thing that pleases her is the thing
that she will hold fast. And yet I do not doubt that the most
important things are always the best remembered;