Harper's; (1888) Volume 77 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1888 edition. Excerpt: ...black and tawny creatures, standing and lying in full relief against the sky. Two miles, a little more or less, brought us to a village wandering up and down a weed-grown, stone-covered hill-side. To our left a. by-road climbed to the top of the hill, past the plain bare kirk with its little graveyard, and higher still to two white cottages, their thatched roofs green with a thick growth of grass, and vines about their doors, the loch and the mountain in the background. But the cottages which to the right of our road straggled down to a rocky stream below had no redeeming whitewash, no vines about their doors. The turf around them was worn away. Some were chimneyless; on others the thatch, where weeds did not hold it together, had broken through, leaving great holes in the roof. On a bench tilted up against the wall of the lowest of these cottages sat an old gray-haired man in Tam 0' Shanter, his head bent low, his clasped hands falling between his knees. It was a. picturesque place, and we camped out awhile under an old cart near the road-side. Perhaps it would have been wise if, like Mr. Hamerton, we could have seen only the picturesqueness of the Highland clachan, only the color and sublimity of the huts, only the fi ne women who live within them. But how could we sit there and not see that the picturesqueness was that of misery, that whatever color and sublimity there might be--and to the sublimity I must confess we were blind--were but outward signs of poverty and squalor, and that the huts sheltered not only strong young women, but feeble old men like that pathetic figure with the clasped hands and bent head? Ve have seen the old age of the poor when we thought it but a, peaceful rest after the work of years. In English...