n I first knew him
at Oxford, been attempting to excite sympathy with some vague project of
revolution by rewriting economic science in terms of sentiment which
sometimes, but only on rare occasions, struck fire by chance contact
with the actual facts of life. It is hardly surprising that such ideas
as these, jumbled together by a mob in Trafalgar Square, took practical
form, on a certain memorable occasion, in a looting of shops in
Piccadilly--an enterprise instigated by men one of whom, enlightened by
disillusion, has subsequently earned respect as a grave cabinet
minister.

As for myself, the most pertinacious conviction which these movements
forced on me was that, whatever elements of justice and truth might lurk
in them, they were based on wild distortions of historical and
statistical facts, or on an ignorance even more remarkable of the actual
dynamics of industry, of the powers of the average worker, and of the
motives by which he is actuated.

Dominated by this conviction, which for me was verified every time I
opened a newspaper, I found myself daily devoting more and more of my
time to the task of reducing this chaos of revolutionary thought to
order. But what most sharply awakened me to the need for such a work was
an incident which, before it took place, would have, so I thought, a
tendency to lull my anxieties for a time rather than to maintain or
stimulate them.

I had regarded the revolutionary mood as mainly, if not exclusively, an
emanation from those hotbeds of urban industry in which the modern
industrial system has reached its most complete development, and I
pictured to myself the more remote districts of the kingdom--especially
the Highlands of Scotland--as still the scenes of an idyllic and almost
undisturbed content. As to the rural counties of England, I was, so I
think, correct, but, as to the Scottish Highlands, the truth of my ideas
in this respect still remained to be tested. To me the Highlands were
thus far nothing more than a name. I was therefore delighted when one
morning I received an invitation from Lord and Lady Howard of Glossop,
to stay with them for some weeks at Dorlin, their remote Highland home.

Dorlin, which had been bought by Lord Howard from his connection, Mr.
Hope Scott, is situated on the borders of a sea loch, Loch Moidart, and
of all places in Scotland it then enjoyed the repute of being one of the
least accessible. The easiest means of reaching it was by a long d