“This A.M.—­Got up at the usual starting hour, 7 o’clock, and as it looked only dark we decided to go.  At breakfast it started to rain again and Mamma and the Doctor began to back out, but Maud and I talked to some advantage.  We argued that if we were going to sit around waiting for a fair day in this country we might just as well give up seeing anything more interesting than hotel parlours and dining-rooms.

“We started, and just as a ‘send off’ the old sky opened and let down a deluge of water.  It rained all the time we were on Loch Lomond, but that didn’t prevent us from being up on deck on the boat.  From under umbrellas we saw the most beautiful scenery in Scotland.  Part of this trip was made by coach, always in the pouring rain.  We drove on and on through the hills, seeing nothing but sheep, sheep, sheep.  Doctor Talmage asked the driver what kind of vegetables they raised in the mountains and the driver replied—­’mutton.’  We had luncheon at a very pretty little hotel on Loch Katrine, and here boarded a little steamer launch, ‘Rob Roy,’ for a beautiful sail.  I never, no matter where I travel, expect to look upon a lake more beautiful.  The mountains give wildness and romance to the calm and quiet of the lake, and the island.  Maud read aloud to us parts of ‘The Lady of the Lake’ as we sat out on deck.”

In Edinburgh Dr. Talmage preached his well-known sermon upon unrequited services, at the request of Lord Kintore, the son of the Earl of Kintore, who had suggested the theme to him some years before.  In fact the Doctor wrote this sermon by special suggestion of the Earl of Kintore.

Incidents great and small were such a large part of the eventful trip to Europe that it is difficult to make those omissions which the disinterested reader might wish.  The Doctor, like ourselves, saw with the same rose-coloured glasses that we did.  We were very pleasantly entertained in Edinburgh by Lord Kintore and others, but the most interesting dinner party I think was when we were the guests of Sir Herbert Simpson, brother of the celebrated Sir James Y. Simpson, the man who discovered the uses of chloroform as an anaesthetic.  We dined in the very room where the discovery was first tested.  When Dr. Simpson had decided upon a final experiment of the effects of chloroform as an anaesthetic, he invited three or four of his colleagues and friends to share the test with him.  They met in the very room where we dined with Sir Herbert Simpson and his family.  The story goes that when everything had been prepared for the evening’s work, Dr. Simpson informed “Sandy,” an old servant, that he must not be disturbed under any circumstances, telling him not to venture inside the door himself until 5 a.m.  Then, if no one had left the room, he was to enter.  “Sandy” obeyed these instructions to the letter, and came into the room at 5 in the morning.  He was very much shocked to find his master and the others under the table in a stupor.  “I never thought my master would come to this,” said Sandy.  He was still in the employ of the family, being a very old man.