56 A Century's Changes. 



We cannot wonder in the circumstances described that from 

 1786 till 1803 no less than live teachers held office in Hutton. 

 One of these voluntarily demitted office, and another was turned 

 away " for closing the school three or four montlis during bay 

 and harvest." His excuse for doing so was that "the salary did 

 not give him encouragement to attend school for a longer portion 

 of the year." It is also no wonder that delincjuents before the 

 Kirk-session, on being interrogated whether they could sign their 

 names, often answered " no." There has been an emphatic 

 advance from then till now. But it lias been said that there is 

 no unmixed good ; and has not the growth of education by turn- 

 ing the people's minds on other subjects caused them to forset 

 their old legendary lore, their fine old superstitions, their old 

 saws, the old nursery rhymes their mothers sang to them, old 

 world stories of fierce love and strife, and the ghost stories 

 they told to each other by the evening fire till their flesh 

 crept and sleep fled their pillows. There is always loss where 

 there is gain. The scientific spirit is spreading among the very 

 children. A child in this parish asked his aunt one day, " Who 

 made the flowers 1" " Ye must ask the minister that," she said, 

 speaking solemnly, but his younger brother was by, and, equal to 

 the occasion, the minister's services were not required. " Howt, 

 man, they grow ! " he cried decisively, and, one can think, with 

 the air of a philosopher. This rationalist was about five years 

 olfl — the youngest I ever knew. I doubt if a single person in 

 this parish to day believes in a bona-Jide ghost. Yet not long ago 

 I came upon a fragment of the old philosophy — who will have 

 the courage to rise up and condemn it ■? An aged man heard a 

 "rap" on his door the night before his son died— the same as 

 Adam Bede heard while he was making the cofiin, and his father 

 was drowning in the brook — and knew what it meant. Again, 

 his daughters heard a sudden crack in their bedroom " like the 

 breaking of sticks," and next morning Jenny Graham, their 

 neighbour, was dead. My old friend has cast overboard his 

 belief in ghosts as unscientific, but he still retains his faith in 

 " raps," for which, I am sure, all right-minded persons will thank 

 him. 



We have seen that at tiie beginning of the century the 

 parishioners of Hutton and Corrie, like other people throughout 

 Scotland I suppose, were living priiacipally on oatmeal, and had a 

 hard struggle to get it. At that time the oatmeal barrel held the 



