ther to discuss matters at Castle Grant
(Lord Seafield's), the ideal home of a chieftain. To this conclave I was
taken by my host, Lord Lovat, from Beaufort. Five chieftains were
present, supported by five pipers, whose strains might have elicited
echoes from the slopes of the farthest Grampians.

Before the public meeting which was planned at Castle Grant took place I
had left the Lovats', being called by business to England; but I had not
been long in London before an opportunity of political action was
offered me, in a manner which I could not resist. My book _Social
Equality_ had, it seemed, so far achieved its object that a letter
presently reached me, written on behalf of a number of students at the
University of St. Andrews, asking me whether, could the requisite
arrangements be made, I would be willing, at the next election, to
stand as Conservative candidate for the St. Andrews Boroughs, as the
present member--a Liberal--would before long retire. The proper
authorities were consulted, and, the proposal meeting with their
approval, I agreed to begin forthwith the needed preliminary work, on
condition that if meanwhile some member of a Fifeshire family should be
willing to take the place of a stranger such as myself, I should be
allowed to withdraw and make room for him.

In the end such a substitute was found, and in due time was elected.
Meanwhile, however, I had begun a campaign of speeches which, so I was
told, and so I should like to believe, contributed to his ultimate
victory. At all events they enabled me to test certain expository
methods which other speakers might perhaps reproduce with advantage. As
among the subjects discussed by speakers of all parties, the land
question generally, and not in Scotland only, continued to hold the most
prominent place, I put together in logical form the statistical data
relating to it, so far as I had been able to digest them; and having
dealt with them verbally in the simplest language possible, I proceeded
to illustrate them by a series of enormous diagrams, which were, at the
appropriate moment, let down from the cornice like a series of long
window blinds. One of these represented, by means of a long column
divided into colored sections, the approximate total of the income of
the United Kingdom according to current imputations and the enormous
portion of it taken as land rent by the owners of more than 1,000 acres
as it must have been according to Bright. Another