Welsh Journals

he told me that if I did not hurry into profes- sional life, something might come of me. I had undertaken the pastoral care of a Calvinistic Methodist Church at Dolwyddelen, near Llan- rwst; and it is just possible that Professor Nichol had heard that 1 was entering the sacred profession. His letter precipitated a notion 1 had been playing with into a sudden resolve. I gave up the Church, and went to Bonn on the Rhine with my friend, Hugh Walker, in order that we might continue our studies in Philosophy and sit for Honours in the following autumn. On our way to Germany we went to Wales, and, as a matter of course, I visited the great friend of my youth, Mrs. Roxburgh, now living in Bettws-y-Coed, and took Walker with me. Miss Roxburgh was there, a young lady a few years younger than Walker; and she made the evening most pleasant for us. Walker fell in love with her there and then, and irremediably. It was the only obious case of boundless love at first sight that I had ever witnessed. Al- though he was endowed with all the self-con- tained taciturnity of a Scotsman, not many days passed before he had made me his confession- of which, in fact, there was no need, for there were other evidences in plenty. One of the results was that I found myself committed to the most impossible task I ever faced. We were in Germany by this time, and I tried to teach Walker the first few notes of one of the songs of Burns- 01 a' the airts the win' can blaw I dearlv love the West," etc. In all respects save one there was infinite variety in Walker's rendering of the song as he walked along the banks of the Rhine somehow every note was out of tune. Walker and I had a very happy and industrious summer in Bonn. We stayed with an old ivory- carver, in Struve Strasse, who had two fair daughters in the little shop he kept, and to whom he owed most of his trade with the University students. With the help of these two young women Walker and I managed to witness a series of sword-fights between the students of the Univer- sity. These were fought on that occasion in a kind of out-house, some two miles from the citv and an uncommonly silly and objection- able performance we thought it was. Five duels This is What Happened. By Howell Davies. Regrettez-vous le temps ou le ciel sur la terre Marchait et respirait dans un peuple de dieux; Oil tout était divin, jusqu' aux douleurs humaines; Oil le monde adorait ce qu' il tue aujourdhui? ALFRED DR MUSSET. were fought that afternoon, and one man was seriously wounded. On another occasion Walker and I had a most pleasant excursion on horseback up the Rhine; and on still another we held a feast in the Club," of which we had been made temporary members, where the wines were very good and very cheap. When the hour became late Walker and I might be heard alternately praising our respective mothers, and when the club was closing we had a memorable walk together in the moonlight and amongst the fire-flies, along the left bank of the Rhine. The feast was in- tended to celebrate our finishing of the read- ing of Caird's Philosophy of Kant, and was to have been the first of a series. It remained the only one. At the close of the summer, Walker, who was well off, tempted me to spend my last penny on a Swiss tour. I thought the chance was not likely to come again in the way of a Methodist preacher, and I went. We sailed together up the Rhine, then went to Basle and Lucerne, and over the St. Gothard to the Italian side. We descended to Airolo most expeditiously, for we sat on the green turf of the mountain side and slid down, amongst the grasshoppers, with great enjoyment. But we discovered afterwards that we had put our trousers to uses for which they were not intended. The last sight I saw for some nights after that adventure was Walker sewing deftly with his left hand, trying to repair and fortify himself behind. Having returned over the St. Gothard, we crossed the Furka Pass, saw the source of the Rhone, and followed its course, walked up the glen to Zermat and down again during a wonderful thunder-storm. Then! we went to Chamounix for a few days and took some of the well-known climbs, but not Mont Blanc itself. Thence we returned by Geneva, Lausanne, and Berne, and down the Rhine. I arrived home penniless, having spent the last of the savings I had made while a school- master. Then I borrowed two pounds from Mrs. Roxburgh to pay my fare to Glasgow and maintain myself pending the arrival of the instalment of Dr. Williams's Scholarship, which the trustees, being pleased with my under- graduate course, had extended for a fourth year. (To be continued). THERE were strange things afoot in the Principality. Llwyd, the son of Kilcoed, had cast the charm and illusion over the seven Cantrevs of Dyved; in the whole county there was, as the Mabinogion tells us, neither house, nor beast, nor smoke, nor fire, nor man, nor dwelling; but the houses of the court, empty and deserted and uninhabited." From the feast of Narberth, when the charm came riding on the wings of the storm, when it