RISEN B Y PERSE VERANCE. 



sending us there. Later in the evening, after a short twihght 

 walk, for which the sedentary occupation of my Uncle James 

 formed an apology, but in which my Uncle Alexander always 

 shared, and which usually led them into solitary woods, or 

 along an unfrequented sea-shore, some of the old divines were 

 read ; and I used to take my place in the circle, though, I am 

 afraid, not to much advantage. I occasionally caught a fact, 

 or had my attention arrested for a moment by a simile or 

 metaphor ; but the trains of close argument, and the passages 

 of dreary " application," were always lost. 



' I quitted the dame's school at the end of the first twelve- 

 month, after mastering that grand acquirement of my life — 

 the art of holding converse with books, and was transferred 

 straightforth to the grammar school of the parish, at which 

 there attended at this time about a hundred and twenty boys, 

 with a class of about thirty individuals more, much looked 

 down upon by the others, and not deemed greatly worth the 

 counting, seeing that it consisted only of lassies. . . . The 

 building in which we met was a low, long, straw-thatched 

 cottage, open from gable to gable, with a mud floor below 

 and an unlathed roof above ; and stretching along the naked 

 rafters, which, when the master chanced to be absent for a 

 few minutes, gave noble exercise in climbing, there used 

 frequently to lie a helm, or oar, or boathook, or even a fore- 

 sail, the spoil of some hapless peat-boat from the opposite 

 side of the firth. . . . The parish schoolmaster was a scholar 

 and an honest man, and if a boy really wished to learn, he 

 certainly could teach him. . . . He was in the habit of 

 advising the parents or relations of those he deemed his 

 clever lads, to give them a classical education ; and meeting 

 one day with Uncle James, he urged that I should be put on 



