My travels Author:Robert Shields Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. ROBERT SHIELDS VISITS HIS NATIVE LAND. /COUNTING first in importance a visit to Her J Majesty Queen Victoria atWindsor-Castle.it was natur... more »al that my thoughts should, after that incident, revert to the home of my fathers—my native land—the place of my boyhood days. Early on a sweet June morning, with spirits tuned as only thoughts of home will tune them, I started on a journey to dear old " Dunferm- line," where I had first seen the light of this world. Away to the peaceful fields and hills of Perth was a descent in one way, but not in all ways, for even as I glided along, thinking somewhat of my boyhood days and of the many happy hours spent beneath the parental roof, my thoughts would revert back to my amorous aspirations of Windsor Castle. But once near Dunfermline one association and then another brought to memory the dear old home. I seemed to mount up as with the wings of eagles to the very mountain tops in my anxiety to reach the place of my birth. I must have done some things absently, surely, for I found myself being greeted on the highroad by a stray gardener, who was wending his way to market. He said " Waes, my maun, bit your michty high-steppin', that ye canna keep frae rinnin entil a puir body." " Hoots, maun," I was quick to reply, " I beg your pardon, really," giving the gardener my hand for a guid honest shake for Auld Lang Syne. There were, as might be supposed, some changes observable about Dunfermline and its people, since the years when I trod its streets a Scottish boy. There were few people whom I knew, or who knew me. The buildings and the streets themselves had not changed overmuch, for changes in a Scottish town come but slowly. In the matter of manufactures, however, the improvements and progress were very marked, for...« less