up the sands!  I ran and played with the children and the dog—­and built a big sand castle ("Early English if not Delia Cruscan"!!), and by good-luck and much sharp hunting among the storm-wrack flung ashore among the foam, found four cork floats, and made the children four ships with paper sails, and had a glorious dose of oxygen and iodine.  How strange are the properties of the invisible air!  The air from an open window at Ecclesfield gives me neuralgia, and doubly so at Exeter.  To-day the wild wind was driving huge tracts of foam across the sands in masses that broke up as they flew, and driving the sand itself after them like a dust-storm.  I could barely stand on the slippery rocks, and yet my teeth seemed to settle in my jaws and my face to get PICKLED (!) and comforted by the wild (and very cold) blast....  Now to sweet repose, but I was obliged to tell you I had been within sound of the sea, aye! and run into and away from the waves, with children and a dog.  This is better than a Bath Chair in Brompton Cemetery!...

Thornliebank, Glasgow. September 8, 1881.

...  “It is good to be sib to” kindly Scots! and I am having a very pleasant visit.  You know the place and its luxuries and hospitalities well.

I came from Newcastle last Friday, and (in a good hour, etc.) bore more in the travelling way than I have managed with impunity since I broke down.  I came by the late express, got to Glasgow between 8 and 9 p.m., and had rather a hustle to to get a cab, etc.  A nice old porter (as dirty and hairy as a Simian!) secured one at last with a cabby who jabbered in a tongue that at last I utterly lost the running of, and when he suddenly (and as it appeared indignantly!) remounted his box, whipped up, and drove off, leaving me and my boxes, I felt inclined to cry(!), and said piteously to the porter, “What does he say?  I cannot understand him!” On which the old Ourang-Outang began to pat me on the shoulder with his paw, and explain loudly and slowly to my Sassenach ears, “He’s jest telling ye—­that ’t’ll be the better forrr ye—­y’unnerstan’—­to hev a caaaab that’s got an i(ro)n railing on the top of it—­for the sake of yourrr boxes.”  And in due time I was handed over to a cab with an iron railing, the Simian left me, and so friendly a young cabby (also dirty) took me in hand that I began to think he was drunk, but soon found that he was only exceedingly kind and lengthily conversational!  When he had settled the boxes, put on his coat, argued out the Crums’ family and their residences, first with me and then with his friends on the platform, we were just off when a thought seemed to strike him, and back he came to the open window, and saying “Ye’ll be the better of havin’ this ap”—­scratched it up from the outside with nails like Nebuchadnezzar’s.  Whether my face looked as if I did not like it or what, I don’t know, but down came the window again with a rattle, and he wagged the leather strap