and you are sure to catch it hot and heavy for your interference in a matter which he declares concerns him alone, and yet with which he has been pestering everybody that would for a moment listen to him all the way from Oban to Staffa, or from Ballachulish to Tyndrum. Give a man of this kind the softest cushion in the coziest corner of Cleopatra's barge; the box seat in the victor's own chariot in a triumphal procession; a first and full supply of all the delicacies at the table of Apicius of De rê Culinaria fame, and he would still be the same fault-finder and grumbler. One way of shutting up the inveterate grumbler, very effectual in most cases, is to fool him to the top of his bent--to give him line, in the piscatorial sense. If he complains that his seat on the coach is hard and the rails behind hurt his spine, assure him at once, in a confidential sort of way, that you believe the axle is horribly twisted, and is as likely as not to snap in twain just about half-way down the next incline. If he complains of the dust, give it as your candid opinion that the Road Trustees should be heavily fined for not allaying the nuisance by a properly arranged water-cart service all over the Black Mount. If he complains that the steamer trembles in all her timbers, and the steam, as it escapes at the calling-places, makes a horrible noise, agree with him at once, hinting that an explosion of the boiler is by no means an unlikely event through the carelessness of the coal-begrimed stoker, who is just then cooling himself at an open air-hole, and wiping his brow with a wisp of tow. If at dinner he abuses the soup, ask him how it could possibly be good, seeing that the water whereof it is made was taken a week ago, by means of a tarry bucket, from the third lock of the Crinan Canal? Does he abuse his salmon? Shake your head sadly, and point with your fork towards the round of beef, hinting that at this season cattle sometimes die a natural death, and then their carcasses are to be had for a third of the market price of good beef. Go with him and beyond him in this sort of way for a little, and he will soon see that you are only poking your fun at him, and the chances are that he will cease troubling you at all events with his complaints for the rest of the day. After all, however, it is but justice to observe that even your inveterate grumbler is not infrequently a much more amiable person than he seems; kind, too, after a fashion, and amazingly liberal when a proper occasion offers.