But if from the highland huts he had observed how intermittently the blue smoke-curls rose and fell, he was most pleased to watch on a still day the tremulous upward pillars of smoke that rose from the cottages of his native dale. In his _Guide to the Lakes_ (page 44) Wordsworth has said, 'The singular beauty of the chimneys will not escape the eye of the attentive traveller. The low square quadrangular form is often surmounted by a tall cylinder, giving to the cottage chimney {21} the most beautiful shape that is ever seen. Nor will it be too fanciful or refined to remark that there is a pleasing harmony between a tall chimney of this circular form and the living column of smoke ascending from it through the still air.' And my friend George's memory of Mr. Wordsworth's dictum about the need of having the chimney coign 'natural headed and natural bedded, a lile bit red and a lile bit yaller' is again found to be true to the life from a passage in the same _Guide to the Lakes_ (p. 60), in which the poet, after stating that the principle that ought to determine the position, size, and architecture of a house (viz., that it should be so constructed as to admit of being incorporated into the scenery of nature) should also determine its colour, goes on to say 'that since the chief defect of colour in the Lake country is an over-prevalence of bluish-tint, to counteract this the colour of houses should be of a warmer tone than the native rock allows'; and adds, 'But where the cold blue tint of the rocks is enriched by an iron tinge, the colours cannot be too closely imitated, and will be produced of itself by the stones hewn from the adjoining quarry.' How beautiful the {22} colouring of the Rydal quarry stone is, and how dutifully the son of the poet carried out his father's will in his recent rebuilding of a family residence near Foxhow, may be judged by all who glance at the cylindrical chimneys, or look at the natural material that forms the panels of the porch of the 'Stepping-stones' under Loughrigg. I rose to go, but George detained me. For he was proud to remember that upon one occasion Mr. Wudsworth had keenly watched him as he put forth his feats of strength in the wrestling ring at Ambleside, 'in the chuchyard, day efter t' fair, forty or fifty years sen,' and had passed a remark upon him. It was in the days 'when fowks wrestled for nowt no mair than a bit o' leather strap.' And George had 'coomed to pit,' as the saying is, and 'Efter comin agaen ya man and throwin' him, and anudder and throwin' him,' was last man in against a noted wrestler, one Tom Chapman. He had agreed for one fall. Mr. Wordsworth was 'leukin' on.' George and his antagonist 'com' together, and Chapman fell. 'And I mind that I was mair pleased wi' Mr. Wudsworth's word than wi' t' strap (or belt), for fowks tell't me that he keepit {23} saying, 'He must be a powerful young man that. He must be a strong young man.'