Volume 3 - Electric Scotland

446 DUNTULM.
or to themselves. But these are tender points. Where
good is intended, it is painful to be obliged to think that
it is not likely to be attained. Passing Kyle Haken, the
wide sea opens between Sky and the mainland, and all
interest is at an end.
Once more, you must make the Knight's movement
with me, for why should you be troubled with all my
diurnal proceedings. I ought, doubtless, to commence
a new letter; to leave a white page on which you might
make your annotations and pass your censures. But
these blank spaces are like so many dishes without meat
and now that the pretty little birds and beasts of the
good old days of the Alduses and Gryphiuses have dis-
appeared in the revolutions of taste, I see no advantage
in wasting so much paper, in the present high price of
that commodity. So you must even read on.
It was appointed that I should see Duntulm Castle,
and it was in vain that I wished to go in the opposite
direction. My letters were written ; I should be hospi-
tably received by the Major; I was in hospitable hands
already; every one knew better than myself what I
ought to do, what I wished to do: 1 could not think of
not going to Duntulm to day, or of going any where else,
or of putting it off till to-morrow. Like poor Gulliver in
the paws of the monkey, I did indeed know but too well
that, here as elsewhere, I had nothing to do but to lie
still and be crammed with kindness over night, and with
passive obedience in the morning. I might rebel, it is
true ;
but we must not quarrel with kind intentions, how-
ever oppressive, if it can be avoided. I wish some one
would tell our good friends of the Highlands, that a man
may be choaked as effectually with turtle as with por-
ridge, if it is to be crammed down his throat with a stick.
Our English friends do not take kindly to this treatment
;
;