but friends are better.” What a splendid excuse for joining the lassies and the lads at Corrie and revelling in the healthful pursuits of their youthful exuberance! Besides, said I to myself, have I not accomplished enough during my eighteen months’ drilling under Routh, Maxwell, La Grange, Rayleigh, Stokes, and Tyndall to deserve a complete change of mental and physical activity? When a person looks for an excuse to do what he or she likes to do a splendid excuse can always be found, and so I bade a temporary farewell to Faraday’s “Electrical Researches,” and joined the playful activities of my Corrie friends, challenging them to go the limit. In tennis and swimming I held my own, but the Highland reels floored me every time, until Madge, one of the sturdy lassies from Greenock, by persistent private instruction finally succeeded in initiating me into the mysteries of the Highland rhythm. Glen Sannox, near Corrie, with its rich bed of heather, watched me often by the hour making many futile efforts to catch this rhythm and make my limbs obey it. Nobody else watched these efforts in lonely Glen Sannox excepting Madge, and she, I told her, had more fun than a Bosnian gypsy training his bear. I can still hear the slopes of Glen Sannox echoing the clear notes of her ringing laughter, whenever I made an awkward and clumsy movement in my persistent efforts to master the Highland fling or reel. She could not help it, and I did not mind it, because I had made up my mind to do the trick or die. Finally I did it, not very well, but well enough for a fellow who was not a Scotchman, and Madge presented me with my portrait in pencil, which she drew during the intermissions between my efforts to master the art of the Highland dances. That was my reward and it was a very good one; she was a most promising young artist who had won several prizes in the Greenock art school. The memory of this experience always recalled to my mind the thoughts which went through my head at that time--the thoughts, namely, that Scotch originality, individuality, and sturdiness are hard to follow, not only when a foreigner meets these wonderful qualities in the mental activity of a Scot, like the mental activity of a Maxwell, but also in physical activity like that displayed in the national dances of Scotland. One does not appreciate fully the wonderful qualities of the Scot until he tries to master the theory and the practice of the Highland fling or reel. Maxwell’s electrical theory, I thought, might be just as different from other electrical theories as the Highland dances are different from the dances of other nations. I found out later that my guess was not very far from the truth.