pon me, until I came to view
it not merely a refuge from exposure and fatigue, a nook screened and
protected by Nature's benediction from wintry storms and Hebridean
gloom, but as a sanctum for the spirit, an ideal resting-place for
restless souls,--a place to be loved and longed for forevermore. If I
have said too much, and you convict me of romance and exaggeration,
fellow-travellers, who like me have sometimes made this haven, then
sunlight and moonlight and soft breezes and sweet sounds have been
kinder to me than to you, and you did not see Oban in the light and the
air that I did.

One would scarcely expect, judging from the size of the town, that Oban
could contain more than a single comfortable inn; still, besides the
Caledonian Hotel, of which alone I can testify from experience, there
are at least two or three similar public-houses, and I know not how many
lodging-houses of lesser pretension; for Oban is the centre of no little
travel, and is the rallying-point and rendezvous for tourists,
especially during the months of August and September, the popular season
in the Highlands.

At the Caledonian, an hotel not dissimilar to our best summer resorts in
the White Mountains and other picturesque districts, we were
comfortably, I may say luxuriously, entertained. The accommodations, as
with us, included ladies' parlor and _table d'hote_, and, after a brief
lounge in the former and a substantial meal at the latter, we were ready
to set forth for an evening stroll through the town, a stroll never
omitted by us at that hour in Oban, a delightful and essential sedative
after the fatigues or excitements of the day,--strolls the charm of
which I could never quite define, and the impression from which is
incommunicable. There would seem to be little that was pleasant or
memorable in our perambulations of the main street of a little
fishing-town,--the Bailie, with his stump of a pipe for company, always
choosing the esplanade, while Christie and I as frequently idled along
the opposite pavement, pausing now and then at the little shop-windows
and gazing at their mean or meagre displays, illumined by a farthing
candle, with a keener zest than I had ever experienced in the Rue Rivoli
or the Palais Royal. Our walk rarely extended beyond either extremity of
this street; it was uniform, monotonous, unvaried by any more striking
incident than a lunge into the most humble and ill-furnished of the
shops to procure a penny pipe