And the steamer, be it said, does not always arrive at a reasonable hour. She may be detained some time at Greenock; in dirty weather she may be "on" the Mull of Cantyre all night, buffeted by the big Atlantic there; so that he must be a bold man, or a man gifted with the second sight, who ventures anything but a vague guess as to the hour of her arrival at Oban. And the weather _is_ dirty; the panes are blurred with raindrops; outside one beholds an uncomfortable sodden world, a spongy sky above, and midway, a gull sliding sideways through the murky atmosphere. The streets are as empty now as they will be some months hence. Beauty is in her own room crying over "Enoch Arden," and Valour, taciturn as ever, is in the smoking saloon. The Oxford reading party--which, under the circumstances, has not the slightest interest in Plato--attempts, with no great success, to kill the time by playing at pitch-and-toss. The gentlemen in the Highland dress remain indoors--birds with fine feathers do not wish to have them draggled--and the philabeg and an umbrella would be a combination quite too ridiculous. The tipsy porter is for the time silent; but from the next street the bagpipe grows in volume and torture. How the sound of it pains the nervous ear of a man half-maddened by a non-arriving steamer and a rainy day at Oban! Heavily the hours creep on; and at last the _Clansman_ does steam in with wet decks--thoroughly washed by Atlantic brine last night--and her hundred and fifty passengers, two-thirds of whom are sea-sick. I do not, however, proceed with the _Clansman_. I am waited for at Inverness; and so, when the weather has cleared, on a lovely morning, I am chasing the flying dazzle of the sun up the lovely Linnhe Loch; past hills that come out on one and recede; past shores that continually shift and change; and am at length set down at Fort William in the shadow of Ben Nevis. When a man goes to Caprera, he, as a matter of course, brings a letter of introduction to Garibaldi--when I went to Fort William, I, equally as a matter of course, brought a letter of introduction to Long John. This gentleman, the distiller of the place, was the tallest man I ever beheld out of an exhibition--whence his familiar _sobriquet_--and must, in his youth, have been of incomparable physique. The German nation has not yet decided whether Goethe or Schiller is the greater poet--the Highlander has not yet decided whether "Long John" or "Talisker" is the finer spirit. I presented my letter and was received with the hospitality and courteous grace so characteristic of the old Gael. He is gone now, the happy-hearted Hercules--gone like one of his own drams! His son distils in his stead--but he must feel that he is treading in the footsteps of a greater man. The machinery is the same, the malt is of quality as fine, but he will never produce whisky like him who is no more. The text is the same, but Charles Kean's Hamlet will never be like his father's.