The castle is a great place, which I wouldn’t have missed for the world; but the spot that stirred my soul the most was in a little garden, as high in the air as the top of a steeple, where we could look out over the battlefield of Bannockburn.  Besides this, we could see the mountains of Ben-Lomond, Ben-Venue, Ben-A’an, Benledi, and ever so much Scottish landscape spreading out for miles upon miles.  There is a little hole in the wall here called the Ladies’ Look-Out, where the ladies of the court could sit and see what was going on in the country below without being seen themselves, but I stood up and took in everything over the top of the wall.

I don’t know whether I told you that the mountains of Scotland are “Bens,” and the mouths of rivers are “abers,” and islands are “inches.”  Walking about the streets of Stirling, and I didn’t have time to see half as much as I wanted to, I came to the shop of a “flesher.”  I didn’t know what it was until I looked into the window and saw that it was a butcher shop.

I like a language just about as foreign as the Scotch is.  There are a good many words in it that people not Scotch don’t understand, but that gives a person the feeling that she is travelling abroad, which I want to have when I am abroad.  Then, on the other hand, there are not enough of them to hinder a traveller from making herself understood.  So it is natural for me to like it ever so much better than French, in which, when I am in it, I simply sink to the bottom if no helping hand is held out to me.

I had some trouble with Jone that night at the hotel, because he had a novel which he had been reading for I don’t know how long, and which he said he wanted to get through with before he began anything else.  But now I told him he was going to enter on the wonderful country of the “Lady of the Lake,” and that he ought to give up everything else and read that book, because if he didn’t go there with his mind prepared the scenery would not sink into his soul as it ought to.  He was of the opinion that when my romantic feeling got on top of the scenery it would be likely to sink into his soul as deep as he cared to have it, without any preparation, but that sort of talk wouldn’t do for me.  I didn’t want to be gliding o’er the smooth waters of Loch Katrine, and have him asking me who the girl was who rowed her shallop to the silver strand, and the end of it was that I made him sit up until a quarter of two o’clock in the morning while I read the “Lady of the Lake” to him.  I had read it before and he had not, but I hadn’t got a quarter through before he was just as willing to listen as I was to read.  And when I got through I was in such a glow that Jone said he believed that all the blood in my veins had turned to hot Scotch.

I didn’t pay any attention to this, and after going to the window and looking out at the Gaelic moon, which was about half full and rolling along among the clouds, I turned to Jone and said, “Jone, let’s sing ‘Scots wha ha’,’ before we go to bed.”