19 



CHAPTER II. 



DAME SCHOOL UNCLES JAMES AND SANDY BEGINNINGS OF 

 LITERATURE AND SCIENCE. 



THE brave, kind father, then, is dead, and the boy, 

 gaze he never so long across the waves, will not again 

 clap his hands, and run to tell his mother that the sloop 

 is in the offing. The girlish widow, with her son of five 

 and her two daughters just emerging from infancy, must 

 face the world alone. Of fixed yearly income she has 

 about twelve pounds, but she is skilled as a seamstress, 

 and applies herself industriously to her needle. By way 

 of substitute for a father's authority over her children and 

 for a husband's counsels to herself, she has the vigilant 

 superintending friendliness of her two brothers, known to 

 readers of the Schools and Schoolmasters as Uncle James 

 and Uncle Sandy. These occupied a single dwelling, 

 into which they took one of the little girls, and in which 

 Hugh lived as much as at home. He could hardly have 

 been more happy in fireside guides and instructors. 

 James, the elder, was a saddler ; Alexander, a carpenter. 

 In any rank of society they would have been exceptional 

 men. Thoughtful, sagacious, modest, independent ; ar- 

 dent in their love of knowledge and with no inconsider- 

 able stock of information ; reverent towards God ; mind- 

 ful of duty ; they were such as the best Scottish peasants 



