In my own youth, this region still seemed a hunting-ground for adventurous experience. It is nearly half a century ago that I started out to walk through Atholl with some vague idea of roaming farther. From morn to eve I tramped on from Stanley, and got the length of Blair, some ten leagues. But a boy’s will, one knows, is the wind’s will: I found a train due at Blair, and took it home, I no longer remember why, unless that the day was hot and dusty, as it may well be on this sunny side of the Grampians, where, as a local guide-book puts it, the rain-clouds are apt to “have the bottom knocked out of them by the mountain peaks” fencing Atholl towards the Atlantic. But that fiasco of a walking tour I turned to account by writing a description, which I had the temerity to send to a London magazine. Strange to say, it found favour with the editor, perhaps because--heaven forgive me!--it was spiced by an affectation of Cockney jocularity as the point of view; and so appeared my first magazine article, which now, after many years, strikes me with shame and confusion. How many sympathetic authors might tell the same tale of callow efforts that filled them with pride to appear in print, but the day came when they would gladly have repaid tenfold that once welcome cheque, could they but cancel those pages, which at least may have the luck to blush unseen in some cobwebbed volume! Coming back to Atholl after many days, my pen hopes to be guided in writing its name consistently. In my spelling days, it would be rather _Athole_ and _Argyle_; but the ducal lords of these regions seem to have set a fashion for the double _ll_. Also, by the light of nature, I pronounce the first syllable long and broad, as _Aw_tholl, whereas those of more picked speech say _Ah_tholl, which is easier to say than to sing. As to the spelling, Wordsworth appears to follow an older form-- Among the hills of _Athol_ was he born. Was he, though? The poet makes no doubt of it. “The Boy of whom I speak,” came from a “native glen” among “Garry’s hills,” where his parents, though “exceeding poor,” had a “small hereditary farm.” This son of an Atholl bonnet-laird had duly gone “equipped [Illustration: THE TROSSACHS] with satchel to a school,” and so well improved his opportunities of elementary education that in old age he was able “with an eye of scorn” to turn over the leaves of Voltaire in the original. He had a thorough Caledonian respect for the Sabbath, and for Those godly men Who swept from Scotland, in a flame of zeal, Shrine, altar, image. He even refused “wine and stouter cheer,” when offered by a fellow Atholman, who must have unlearned the native teetotalism while serving abroad-- Chaplain to a military troop Cheered by the Highland bagpipe, as they marched In plaided vest.