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light up the harbor,’ and children were often found to share his excursions.
These sometimes took the form of fishing for mackerel.
On one occasion he wrote:—
I got 5 children back with no injury or loss beyond a hat, a sack and a pair of india-rubbers.
This I think was doing well.
Exercise was his panacea for all ills, and if he felt under a cloud ‘a longish walk’ was the remedy.
After a walk of nine miles, he reported, ‘On leaving I was rather depressed, but came back satisfied with everything in the world.’
To vary these walks riding on horseback was again attempted, without much success.
He wrote in May:—
First ride for season. . . . I have ridden only once or twice since the war-partly from surfeit (at first) partly economy, partly some uneasiness about my side where I was wounded.
But he learned to ride the old-fashioned velocipede, and found that his work at the gymnasium helped him, in body and mind.
‘It stops off all other thoughts for an hour—a day—which walking does not, besides the delightful glow in chest and arms.’
For evening amusement there was a chess club, and the dramatic talent which was so effective in
Colonel Higginson's story-telling and conversation
