A Boyhood in Scotland 



disorder and din unbelievable save by a Scot- 

 tish scholar. We even carried on war, class 

 against class, in those wild, precious minutes. 

 A watcher gave the alarm when the master 

 opened his house-door to return, and it was a 

 great feat to get into our places before he 

 entered, adorned in awful majestic authority, 

 shouting "Silence!" and striking resounding 

 blows with his cane on a desk or on some un- 

 fortunate scholar's back. 



Forty-seven years after leaving this fighting 

 school, I returned on a visit to Scotland, and a 

 cousin in Dunbar introduced me to a minister 

 who was acquainted with the history of the 

 school, and obtained for me an invitation to 

 dine with the new master. Of course I gladly 

 accepted, for I wanted to see the old place of 

 fun and pain, and the battleground on the 

 sands. Mr. Lyon, our able teacher and thrasher, 

 I learned, had held his place as master of the 

 school for twenty or thirty years after I left it, 

 and had recently died in London, after prepar- 

 ing many young men for the English Univers- 

 [ 37 1 



