heads of despots in the dry, hot lands.  Shut up, an umbrella is an unmanageable walkingstick; open, it is an inadequate tent.  For my part, I have no taste for pretending to be a walking pavilion; I think nothing of my hat, and precious little of my head.  If I am to be protected against wet, it must be by some closer and more careless protection, something that I can forget altogether.  It might be a Highland plaid.  It might be that yet more Highland thing, a mackintosh.

And there is really something in the mackintosh of the military qualities of the Highlander.  The proper cheap mackintosh has a blue and white sheen as of steel or iron; it gleams like armour.  I like to think of it as the uniform of that ancient clan in some of its old and misty raids.  I like to think of all the Macintoshes, in their mackintoshes, descending on some doomed Lowland village, their wet waterproofs flashing in the sun or moon.  For indeed this is one of the real beauties of rainy weather, that while the amount of original and direct light is commonly lessened, the number of things that reflect light is unquestionably increased.  There is less sunshine; but there are more shiny things; such beautifully shiny things as pools and puddles and mackintoshes.  It is like moving in a world of mirrors.

And indeed this is the last and not the least gracious of the casual works of magic wrought by rain:  that while it decreases light, yet it doubles it.  If it dims the sky, it brightens the earth.  It gives the roads (to the sympathetic eye) something of the beauty of Venice.  Shallow lakes of water reiterate every detail of earth and sky; we dwell in a double universe.  Sometimes walking upon bare and lustrous pavements, wet under numerous lamps, a man seems a black blot on all that golden looking-glass, and could fancy he was flying in a yellow sky.  But wherever trees and towns hang head downwards in a pigmy puddle, the sense of Celestial topsy-turvydom is the same.  This bright, wet, dazzling confusion of shape and shadow, of reality and reflection, will appeal strongly to any one with the transcendental instinct about this dreamy and dual life of ours.  It will always give a man the strange sense of looking down at the skies.

THE FALSE PHOTOGRAPHER

When, as lately, events have happened that seem (to the fancy, at least) to test if not stagger the force of official government, it is amusing to ask oneself what is the real weakness of civilisation, ours especially, when it contends with the one lawless man.  I was reminded of one weakness this morning in turning over an old drawerful of pictures.