There are a
hundred fishing lochs in Maine, and I'll spend my holidays in future
upon them trout-fishing."
At Cluny there is no night in June and we danced on the lawn in the
bright twilight until late. Mrs. Blaine, Miss Dodge, Mr. Blaine, and
other guests were trying to do the Scotch reel, and "whooping" like
Highlanders. We were gay revelers during those two weeks. One night
afterwards, at a dinner in our home in New York, chiefly made up of
our Cluny visitors, Mr. Blaine told the company that he had discovered
at Cluny what a real holiday was. "It is when the merest trifles
become the most serious events of life."
President Harrison's nomination for the presidency in 1888 came to Mr.
Blaine while on a coaching trip with us. Mr. and Mrs. Blaine, Miss
Margaret Blaine, Senator and Mrs. Hale, Miss Dodge, and Walter
Damrosch were on the coach with us from London to Cluny Castle. In
approaching Linlithgow from Edinburgh, we found the provost and
magistrates in their gorgeous robes at the hotel to receive us. I was
with them when Mr. Blaine came into the room with a cablegram in his
hand which he showed to me, asking what it meant. It read: "Use
cipher." It was from Senator Elkins at the Chicago Convention. Mr.
Blaine had cabled the previous day, declining to accept the nomination
for the presidency unless Secretary Sherman of Ohio agreed, and
Senator Elkins no doubt wished to be certain that he was in
correspondence with Mr.
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