has not always answered to that of others which stick to quiet ways and moderate charges.
The Crieff Hydropathic has all along taken a stand among the latter class, has even had a name for special austerity, due perhaps to the fact that it is frequented by Presbyterian ministers, as one at Harrogate is by Roman Catholic priests. But the Scottish clergy, however formidable in the pulpit, are by no means reluctant to unbend out of it, within the limits of becoming mirth, as we should know from Dean Ramsay; and I don’t think I ever made one of such a jovial and friendly congregation as was gathered in this house in the days when not only strong drink but cards and dancing were under an interdict. One scandal shocked the proprieties of the place. The doctor, its guiding genius and strict censor, had gone to be married. The cat being thus engaged, the mice took advantage of the occasion. Returning unexpectedly from his honeymoon, our moral and medical director found the kids of his abandoned flock capering in the drawing-room. I shall never forget the face with which he stood at the doorway like the statue in Don Juan, then turned away speechless from sorrow or from anger. His helpless indignation reminded me of a carter, noted for bad language, on whom certain graceless loons are said to have played a trick by stealthily letting down the tilt of his cart as it tugged up a load of sand; then they took a short cut to the hill top and disposed themselves for listening to his remarks at a safe distance; but all he could gasp out on discovering his loss, was, “Rin awa’ hame, laddies: I’m no equal to the occasion!” Perhaps that new character as a bridegroom softened the doctor’s severe rule. It is said that even Crieff has to some extent conformed to the world, yet I doubt if its frequenters have a happier time of it than in those Saturnian days.
One meets queer characters at such a place, “gorgons and hydros and chimæras dire,” as a humorist of the neighbourhood used to call them. A few real invalids and some imaginary ones crop up among the crowd of ruddy and buxom pleasure-seekers. There was one gentleman, I remember, who gorged himself at every meal and spent most of the day in snoring about the public rooms; but at idle intervals buttonholed all and sundry to expatiate on his woeful lot of having lost both sleep and appetite. A rarer hydropathic case, and a purple patch on the general tone of honest bourgeoisie, was a still young ne’er-do-weel bearing more than one of Scotland’s honoured names, who had been in, and out of, two crack regiments, had run through two fortunes, so he boasted, and looked on himself as heir to two or three more. Crippled by a drunken fall, his friends kept him practically imprisoned in this uncongenial retreat. His sole luxury was a daily carriage airing; and he liked to drive round the grounds of a certain castle near Crieff, within which the owner, his uncle, would not let him set foot. It was painful to hear him talk of what he would do when he came in for the property. He died before the uncle and the other kinsfolk from whom he had hoped to inherit, a victim of that plague through which this country has hardly a house where there is not one dead, soul or body.
One of the great attractions of Crieff is its being
