Whatever it might occur to them to try, he would
carefully show them how to do it, explain the risks, and then
either share the danger himself or, if that were not possible,
stand aside and wait the event with that unhappy courage of the
looker-on. He was a good swimmer, and taught them to swim. He
thoroughly loved all manly exercises; and during their holidays,
and principally in the Highlands, helped and encouraged them to
excel in as many as possible: to shoot, to fish, to walk, to pull
an oar, to hand, reef and steer, and to run a steam launch. In all
of these, and in all parts of Highland life, he shared delightedly.
He was well onto forty when he took once more to shooting, he was
forty-three when he killed his first salmon, but no boy could have
more single-mindedly rejoiced in these pursuits. His growing love
for the Highland character, perhaps also a sense of the difficulty
of the task, led him to take up at forty-one the study of Gaelic;
in which he made some shadow of progress, but not much: the
fastnesses of that elusive speech retaining to the last their
independence.
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