Page:Footsteps of Dr. Johnson.djvu/238

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186
RORIE MORE'S NURSE.

country had so long enjoyed had silenced "Rorie More's Nurse." There was not water enough in it to have caught that good knight's ear; still less to have lulled him to sleep. Johnson had seen it "in full perfection." It was "a noble cascade," he said. But he paid dearly for the fineness of the sight; for during the whole of his stay the weather was dreary, with high winds and violent rain. "We filled up the time as we could," he writes; "sometimes by talk, sometimes by reading. I have never wanted books in the Isle of

RORIE MORE'S NURSE.
RORIE MORE'S NURSE.

RORIE MORE'S NURSE.

Skye." So comfortably was he situated that he could hardly be persuaded to move on. "Here we settled," he writes, "and did not spoil the present hour with thoughts of departure." When on Saturday Boswell proposed that they should leave on the following Monday, when their week would be completed, he replied: "No, Sir, I will not go before Wednesday. I will have some more of this good."

He was fortunate in his hosts. The Laird, a young man of nineteen, quickly won his friendship. He had been the pupil at University College, Oxford, of George Strahan, who had been