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CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL
OF
POPULAR
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART
CONTENTS
ON MOOR AND LOCH.
BY MEAD AND STREAM.
ROYAL PERSIAN SHERBET.
TERRIBLY FULFILLED.
THE ART OF CONVERSATION.
IN QUEER COMPANY.
HINTS FOR HOUSEWIVES.
A BLACKBIRD’S NEST.
No. 28.—Vol. I.
Price 1½d.
SATURDAY, JULY 12, 1884.
ON MOOR AND LOCH.
About eight o’clock of a June morning the traindraws up at a small station within a short runsouth of the Scottish metropolis. It is not atypical June morning. There has been a fortnight’sdrought, followed by two days of rain—thelatter rejoicing the heart of the agriculturistand the angler; but yesternight the rain ceased,and its place has been taken by a gray mist, orhaar, which the east wind is bringing up fromthe German Ocean. No angler loves mist. Is itnot set down in the angler’s book of common-lawprecedents, that in the case of Man versusTrout, this obscure element is to be construedin favour of the defender? The station atwhich we alight is situated in an upland valley,shut in on the north and west by the moundedPentlands; but this morning their outline showsonly like a denser and darker bank of cloudsin a gray waste of cloudland. Down into thevalley also, thin streaks of mist are creepingdismally and slow, groping their way forwardwith long dripping fingers, like a belated bandof midnight ghosts which the morning light hasstruck with sudden blindness. To the south-west,the Peeblesshire hills are less obscured, butthere is floating over them the dull glaze, theleaden hue, which makes my companion sadlyprognosticate thunder—and thunder to the angler’ssport is as fatal as mist.
It is indeed very far from being a typical Junemorning. The earth is gray, and the sky is gray;and the trees and hedgerows that flank the fieldsand overshadow the cottages and the little inn,are not musical with the song of any bird. Thereis even in the air a touch of the east wind, thatfiend of the North Sea who comes to us annuallywith the crocus and the primrose, and spends atleast three months of his baneful existence intying innumerable knots upon human nerves.His sublime excellency the Sun is doubtless up,as his custom is, long ere now, but this morninghe wilfully persists in keeping his chamber.All this is marked in the time we take to alightat the railway station, give up our tickets, and,shouldering basket and rod, set out towards our