It may be imagined that in a place so remote culture would be missing—­at least the love and knowledge of books which we call culture; but when I say the place was Scotch this delusion is disposed of.  The children had had to walk that long seven miles a day and back again, in all weathers, to obtain an education.  They had grown up to value it, and were the better mentally as well as physically for their thousands of miles of tramping.  There were books in the little household, and good books too.  As often as not when we sat round the red peats of an evening, we discussed Browning or Herbert Spencer.  That year it happened that a party of students from Edinburgh University were camping in the neighbourhood, and they often joined us round the farm fire of an evening.  They talked about books and opinions and men with all the omniscience of youth; but the two girls of the household held their own with them.  Ah, Kate M’Intyre, you did me much friendly service in tying flies for me that summer, and teaching me something of the craft of fishing; but you did a far more enduring service in helping me to see that one does not need towns and libraries to grow the fine flower of wholesome cultured womanhood.  Here, beside that lake, whose lady has been made immortal by the hand of Scott, you showed me that God grows ladies still who wear homespun and live in cottages, and are all the wiser and sweeter for the bright seclusion of their lives.  In a town, you and your family, endowed only with such means as you found sufficient for existence, would have been despondent drudges, you yourself perhaps working in a sewing-room in bad air and for poor pay, but here you were the free-holders of nature.  Never did I see you go about your simple duties—­always with a bright look and a snatch of song—­but I said to myself, ’She hath chosen the better part, which shall not be taken away from her’; and I say it still, though I am well aware that the smart young women of London shops and restaurants will not believe me.  I dare say they would count themselves much better off than you in money, in dress, and in opportunities of pleasure; but I know who was the richer in vitality, in health, and in the power of happiness.

When I lived among these simple folk I shared not only their roof but their labours, and it was thus I came to distinguish between the nature of work in cities and work in the country.  To obtain my meal in a city I had to do things that were distasteful to me; I had to shut myself away from the fresh air and sunlight in a dingy room and to spend dull hours in tasks which afforded me no genuine intellectual pleasure.  Here, on the contrary, every duty had a pastime yoked with it.  I rose early, not only that I might learn to milk the cows, but that I might see the sunrise; if I went into the woods to saw logs that would presently make a clear flame on the evening fire, my lungs drank health among the forest fragrances; when I went fishing I did something not only pleasurable