BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THOMAS EDWARD. 597 



the strap, sent him to bed, and the shirt, with its contents, was soon 

 put in a bowl, and covered with boiling water. 



The time at length came when Tom Edward must be educated. 

 To be sure, he had been educating himself pretty rapidly, but he must 

 be sent to school. This he hated. He could not bear the confine- 

 ment. When between four and five years old he was sent to a dame's 

 school, kept by an old woman called Bell Hill in the garret of an ordinary 

 dwelling-house. But he often played the truant, and would rather be 

 in the fish-market than the school-room. His truancy soon became 

 known to his mother, who then employed her mother, Tom's granny, 

 to take him to school. But Tom rebelled against his granny's super- 

 vision, and got away from her so often that she had to drag him "by 

 the scruff o' the neck." Once he slipped away from her, and ran 

 for the water, and was in the act of getting a lot of horse-leeches, 

 when his granny, who had pursued him, caught him by the neck. 

 He let go of the stone, and, making a sudden bound, upset the old 

 woman in the water. His comrades called out, " Tarn, lam, your 

 granny's droonin' ! " Tom was off, and did not get home till night, 

 when his mother abused him for a ragamuffin who tried to drown his 

 granny. For once his father was in good-humor, and remarked to his 

 wife that " granny should beware of going so near the edge of such a 

 dirty place." The scapegrace returned to school, but did not learn 

 much. The education that Bell Hill gave was rather theological ; 

 she prayed, or, as Tom called it, " groaned," with the children twice 

 a day, and in one of these devotional exercises Tom came to grief. 

 She forbade him to bring his " nasty and dangerous things " to the 

 school, but it made no difference. He had a noisy jackdaw at home, 

 of which he was very fond, and one day he stuffed it inside of his 

 trousers, and took it to school. While Mother Bell was at prayer 

 the daw became restless, got its head ou*, and began to scream. 

 " The Lord preserv's a' ! Fat's this noo ? " cried Bell, starting to 

 her feet. "It's Tam Edward again!" shouted the scholars, " wi' a 

 craw stickin' oot o' his breeks ! " Bell went up to him, pulled him 

 up by his collar, dragged him to the door, thrust him out, and locked 

 the door after him, and Edward never saw Bell Hill's school again. 



Tom was next sent to a school governed by a master who had 

 great faith in what is called the "taws" 1 as a means of education. 

 But the boy's old habits followed him, and one day he smuggled into 

 the school a broken bottle, containing horse-leeches and the grubs of 

 water-flies. Mr. Smiles relates that "all passed on smoothly for 

 about half an hour, when one of the scholars gave a loud scream, and 

 started from his seat. The master's attention was instantly attracted, 

 and he came down from the desk, taws in hand. " What's this?" he 

 cried. " It's a horse-leech crawlin' up my leg !" "A horse-leech ?" 

 "Yes, sir; and see," pointing to the corner in which Tom kept his 

 1 " Taws," a leather strap, about three feet long, cut into tails at the end. 



