Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 439, page 39 by Various Authors
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y much in the fashion of the last generation. Sometimes, on the occasion of a holiday in Glasgow, which is six hours' steaming distant, the village is flooded with a moving population that can neither find house-room on the island nor means of quitting it the same day. Then comes a scene of something more than Mexican roughness. Shawls, cloaks, plaids, are the only substitute for tents, and a bush or a tree the only shelter from the summer wind. Such wandering companies are rarely short of provisions, for they have a wholesome dread of Highland hunger; and hearty is the feast and loud the merriment, as they sit thus, houseless and homeless outcasts of the Clyde. The night comes on, neither dark nor unpleasantly cold, and the trooping stars assemble in the heavens, and look down on the slumbrous waters, as bright and new as they were seen of old from the hill-tops of Chaldea. Higher swell the hearts of the spectators for a time, till, yielding to the influence of the hour, lower and lower sink their pulses of emotion, like the tide of the lately panting deep. Their voices fall; their words are few and whispered, then heard no more; the lights of the village disappear one by one; the last door is heard to shut; there is silence on the earth.
We never heard of anybody being the worse of this adventure, although it is a kind of roughing we would not positively recommend to Miss Laura Matilda, or any of her fair sisters. We would give them a thatched roof over their heads, a weather-tight room for their slumbers, and a substantial wall between them and the couple of cows that yield their warm milk in the morning. We would afford them a homely sitting-room, with no temptation to keep them within doors for a single moment, except during their brief and humble meals. We would plant their tabernacle in some lonely place on a hillside, or on the shores of a romantic loch, an hour's smart walk from any society they are accustomed to at home. We would have them make acquaintances of the said two cows; of both