Page:Heroes of the telegraph (IA cu31924031222494).djvu/176

 In summer his holidays were usually spent in the Highlands, where Jenkin learned to love the Highland character and ways of life. He was a good shot, rode and swam well, and taught his boys athletic exercises, boating, salmon fishing, and such like. He learned to dance a Highland reel, and began the study of Gaelic; but that speech proved too stubborn, craggy, and impregnable even for Jenkin. Once he took his family to Alt Aussee, in the Stiermark, Styria, where he hunted chamois, won a prize for shooting at the Schützen-fest, learned the dialect of the country, sketched the neighbourhood, and danced the Steierisch and Ländler with the peasants. He never seemed to be happy unless he was doing, and what he did was well done.

Above all, he was clear-headed and practical, mastering many things; no dreamer, but an active, business man. Had he confined himself to engineering he might have adorned his profession more, for he liked and fitted it; but with his impulses on other lines repressed, he might have been less happy. Moreover, he was one who believed, with the sage, that all good work is profitable, having its value, if only in exercise and skill.

His own parents and those of his wife had come to live in Edinburgh; but he lost them all within ten months of each other. Jenkin had showed great devotion to them in their illnesses, and was worn out with grief and watching. His telpherage, too, had given him considerable anxiety to perfect; and his mother's illness, which affected her mind, had caused himself to fear.

He was meditating a holiday to Italy with his wife in order to recuperate, and had a trifling operation performed on his foot, which resulted, it is believed, in blood poisoning. There seemed to be no danger, and