A NEW YEAR'S DREAM.

BY T. FRASER S. CAMPBELL.

To exploit a new story, or even to find a new audience for an old one, is a task almost as difficult as to create a new climb. I have Ling's authority for the growing difficulty of the latter, though he admits having achieved the feat last summer in Ross-shire, always with that modesty which clings to him as mist clings to a wettermantel, and which is the attribute of all great craftsmen. Now, the story I have in mind, the story of the Man from Kilmarnock, is a very old one, possibly a true one; but, as our first President once said to me, "all good stories are true." He might perhaps have added that all true ones are old. A man once popped his head into a crowded railway carriage and shouted, "Is there anyone here from Kilmarnock?" On receiving from an unobtrusive person in a corner seat a reply that he was of that persuasion, the intruder softly proceeded, “Then lend me your corkscrew." In the same spirit, if a man from Glasgow is asked if he knows Loch Katrine, he is supposed-I say advisedly supposed to reply that he does, but that he always dilutes it with whatever may be his favourite brand (the name and attributes of which may perhaps be recorded on the covers of some future issue of the Journal). Now, the relevancy of these stories may not at first be apparent, but they are introduced to explain the subsequent behaviour of Goggs.

As students of the earlier numbers of our Journal may discover for themselves, with or without the aid of the Index, I was myself, at one time, a very constant attender at the Meets, and I may even claim to have been an actor, in however humble a degree, in some of the historic doings. of the Club; but circumstances have conspired to keep me a stranger to all but one or two Meets during the past fifteen years. However, time and place according, I was enabled to be present, though for one night only, at the recent New Year Meet at Tarbet. We were a happy little The big crowd had not

party there, on the opening night.

yet arrived, so there were just six of us, and two were men

from Glasgow. After dinner we had discussed the Celtic race and its distribution throughout the world, and the man from Crianlarich had proved beyond dispute that the Bretons were really Irish; the Irish, Welsh; the Welsh probably Bretons, and the Scottish Highlanders certainly the finest people in the world. We had then discussed the exact signification of mealls, beinns, sgurrs, cruachs, stobs, stacs, cnocs, creags, cairns, &c., whence we made an easy traverse to the Cobbler, which was apparently to be the pièce de resistance of the morrow; and the difficulties having been canvassed of the “right-angled"—or is it the "three-cornered "?-gully on the face of the Cobbler himself, the feasibility was considered of a successful assault on the rhomboidal wart on the neck of Jean.

A little after ten we all retired to bed, without anyone having "touched the bell for the waiter"-a point of subsequent importance; and seven o'clock the morning found us at breakfast, and listening to the rain coming down in the old, old way.

And this is where Goggs comes in. One of the men from Glasgow, in fact the writer of these lines, had just propounded the question, "Where is Ben Sennacher?" The question seems a harmless one, but on the faces of the other five was clearly suggested the thought that "our poor friend is not quite himself this morning," and then Goggs arrived-dripping: the question was repeated to him: "Where is Ben Sennacher?" At first the editorial nostrils twitched as scenting copy from afar, but a glance at the others sufficed, and he suggested soothingly that I had probably mixed up Loch Vennacher, or Loch Katrine, or other things-an implication which those who have followed this narrative so far, will see to be demonstrably absurd. Mais tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner. Goggs is a man who always gets up at four -he says he likes it; except upon the rare occasions when he does not get to bed until five, when he has been known to lie as late as six. On this occasion he had left Edinburgh at the convivial hour of 4.30 A.M., and had arranged to meet Goodeve and Ling at Arrochar Station at 7.4, all ready for the fray. But these two worthies

were not there; they were, in fact, in the hotel, debating the point as to whether climbing under such conditions were a hobby, or merely a crime. At this point Goggs had arrived-dripping: but there was thunder in his eye as he bore them off, and I saw them no more. But with Goggs, as I have said, tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner, and we remain good friends, as is evidenced by the inclusion of this paper in the pages of the Journal.

The fact is that in the night I had dreamed a dream, and in it someone, I know not who, had pointed to a hill rising peak above peak till it touched the very heavens, and he had cried to me, "Yonder is Ben Sennacher." It was a dream-but what are dreams?

Thursday had been a wretched day but as the afternoon train to Tarbet dragged its slow length along the upper reaches of the Gareloch the mists rolled away, pale stars twinkled in a frosty sky, and the black hills, dotted here and there with the lights of scattered dwellings, were faithfully reflected in the glassy waters, the moon sailed out from her harbour of clouds, and as, after losing sight of Loch Long for a few miles, we swept once more within its ken, I saw far below us the lights of Arrochar. I could just make out, across the loch, the snow-flecked tops of the Cobbler and some of his cronies. But alas! as in the morning I turned my backward steps along the same route, the world was steeped again in impenetrable mist, and my beautiful dreams were gone.

"They had folded their tents like the Arabs,
And as silently stolen away."

But what are dreams but memories? And what are memories but dreams? And what is our New Index, to some at least of us, but a Register of Dreams? Do I not dream when I close my eyes and see through the mists two figures sitting on a steep snow-slope on the foot hills of Cruachan; one is myself, the other a future President of the S.M.C.? suddenly my companion disappears from my side, revolving rapidly downwards on his own axis, while his own axe is pursuing the same course, but far below him? Do I dream when I see our subsequent path traced

in faint points of blood starring the perfect whiteness of the snow, grim testimony of the unequal contest during the descent of naked fingers with the icy crystals of the slope?

*

Again I see myself some years later (New Year Meet, 1905) with the same companion, now the President, on the summit of Beinn a' Bhuiridh. I have left him to survey one of the gullies, the scene of a former climb with W. R. Lester, and turning back I find myself lost in the mist, but a loud and continuous whistling out of the darkness guides my wandering footsteps back to the path, and we descend the hill in safety and together.

Is it in a dream that I sit on the summit of Ben Lui on the afternoon of a day at the very end of December, with two companions-one of them another future President -and look down upon a vast and level sea of cloud a thousand feet below, and stretching for miles towards the west, while the setting sun paints in glorious colours the summits of the surrounding hills?†

Are they but dreams, these dear, dead days, some of them before the birth of our Club, when in twos and threes, and sometimes by the half-dozen, we sheltered at "snug Dalmally," or spent the tedious hours of the night in dimlylighted, slowly-moving trains, just for one brief but glorious day among the hills; days of brilliant sunshine, or days of wind and snow; days when we completed well within the scheduled time the purpose of our quest; days when we had to scamp our work, and race ingloriously for miles to throw ourselves panting into the last train for home just as the bell had rung, and the throbbing engine was waiting to be slipped? But wet or fine, bright or dark, they are now all transmuted by the glorious alchemy of time into memories of pure delight. And there are worse memories than those of many a merry meal within a Highland inn.

So what does it matter whether there is a Ben Sennacher, or where it is? It is but another of my dreams, and

"We are such stuff

As dreams are made of, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep."

* Journal, Vol. I., p. 240 ("Note").

+ Journal, Vol. I., p. 207, "Ben Lui."

HALF HOURS IN THE CLUB LIBRARY.

1. "Prospects and Observations on a Tour in England and Scotland, Natural, Economical, and Literary. By Thomas Newte, Esq. London, 1791.”

2. "Three Successive Tours in the North of England and Great Part of Scotland, interspersed with Descriptions of the Scenes they presented, and Occasional Observations on the State of Society, and the Manners and Customs of the People. By Henry Skrine, Esq., of Warley in Somersetshire. London, 1795."

By S. A. GILLON.

AT the close of the eighteenth century two English gentlemen of good position made a thorough examination of Scotland. Mr Skrine was Squire of Warley in Somersetshire; Mr Newte tells us that he is a landholder, and he appears to have been a Devonian. Both had more than the usual smattering of Latin scholarship, and both had travelled. Mr Newte refers to basaltic rocks on Sunda as if he had seen them himself, and evidently knew his "Continent" more than superficially, and Mr Skrine had travelled widely. Both write in the pompous, rather colourless style that one associates with the writings of Samuel Smiles or Dr Wm. Smith of Classical Dictionary fame. Mr Skrine never, Mr Newte rarely, indulges in humour. Both are interested in agriculture, commerce, land-tenure, architecture, planting, and scenery. The kind of scenery that appeals to them is that round Kelso and Crieff.

There is much mention of gentlemen's seats, elegant grounds, &c. Not that they are insensible to the ruder wilds of the Highlands, but approval ceases in Breadalbane west of Killin, and only reappears at Dalmally. Glen Croe and Glencoe occasion much rich writing, of which