asing difficulty in finding male
teachers.[22] Widows, who in their ante-nuptial days, had been engaged
in teaching are often preferred to men, for reasons of salary. The lot
of such women, who have usually families to support out of their meagre
earnings, is hard indeed: if they keep their health, they manage
tolerably well, but when illness comes into the house, there must be a
deal of suffering and distress. The young pupils who attend the remote
schools of the uplands, also deserve much sympathy. During the heavy
snows and extreme cold of winter, these children--often ill-shod and
scantily fed--have to trudge along miles of country cross-roads or
hill-paths to their little school. Our country is a glory to the eye
when mid-summer and autumn are there, but think of the harsh winter
months with their torrents of driving rain, their whirlwinds of hail
and sleet and the icy nip of the blasts that blow down the snow-sheeted
glens.

[22] A country teacher in Kintyre, with a roll of eight, said to
me: "We have had only one marriage in the district during the
last year, and the bridegroom was aged _three score and fifteen_.
I wonder what education is coming to: there is little or no
patriotism about Kintyre or my roll would be higher. I wish I
could get the people to think more imperially than they do at
present."

ARNISDALE, ETC.

It will be perhaps interesting to the general reader if I strive, by
drawing on my reminiscences, to give him an idea of how education is
carried on in certain remote corners of Scotland at the present time. He
will, perhaps, be led to admire as much as I do the noble work that is
being done by teachers and inspectors for the rising generation of the
country.

Arnisdale, on the mainland facing Skye, is a very destitute district,
and has suffered much from the failure of the once-flourishing
herring-fishery of Loch Hourn. One can see by the attire of the children
that the poverty must be exceptional, even for the Highlands. The
teacher says that in winter she has to think as much how to feed the
children as to teach them. By the charity of some benevolent visitors,
she was, last winter, able to give the pupils a mid-day meal of cocoa
and biscuits. It is a sad contrast to the extraordinary beauty of this
picturesque spot that such dire misery should overtake a proportion of
the natives during the winter season.

Arnisdale is not very accessible, even in the heig