pleasant one. Rows of low, gray-stone, slate-roofed cottages straggling
along a single street--generally narrow and crooked and extending for
distances depending on the size of the place--made up the average
village. Utterly unrelieved by the artistic touches of the English
cottages and without the bright dashes of color from flowers and vines,
with square, harsh lines and drab coloring everywhere, these Scotch
villages seemed bleak and comfortless. Many of them we passed through on
this road, among them Sandquhar, with its castle, once a strong and
lordly fortress but now in a deplorable state of neglect and decay, and
Mauchline, where Burns farmed and sang before he removed to Dumfries. It
was like passing into another country when we entered Ayr, which,
despite its age and the hoary traditions which cluster around it, is an
up-to-date appearing seaport of about thirty thousand people. It is a
thriving business town with an unusually good electric street-car
system, fine hotels and (not to be forgotten by motorists) excellent
garages and repair shops.

Ayr is one of the objective points of nearly every tourist who enters
Scotland. Its associations with Burns, his birthplace, Kirk Alloway, his
monument, the "Twa Brigs," the "Brig O' Doon," and the numerous other
places connected with his memory in Ayr and its vicinity, need not be
dwelt on here. An endless array of guide-books and other volumes will
give more information than the tourist can absorb and his motor car will
enable him to rapidly visit such places as he may choose. It will be of
little encumbrance to him, for he may leave the car standing at the
side of the street while he makes a tour of the haunts of Burns at
Alloway or elsewhere.

It was a gloomy day when we left Ayr over the fine highway leading to
Glasgow, but before we had gone very far it began to rain steadily. We