ogize for. With
himself for his subject, he usually tells not only more than he ought,
but also, in not a few instances, more than he intends. For, as has been
well remarked, whatever may be the character which a writer of his own
Memoirs is desirous of assuming, he rarely fails to betray the real one.
He has almost always his unintentional revelations, that exhibit
peculiarities of which he is not conscious, and weaknesses which he has
failed to recognise as such; and it will no doubt be seen that what is
so generally done in works similar to mine, I have not escaped doing.
But I cast myself full on the good-nature of the reader. My aims have, I
trust, been honest ones; and should I in any degree succeed in rousing
the humbler classes to the important work of self-culture and
self-government, and in convincing the higher that there are instances
in which working men have at least as legitimate a claim to their
respect as to their pity, I shall not deem the ordinary penalties of the
autobiographer a price too high for the accomplishment of ends so
important.

MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS
OR
THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION.

CHAPTER I.

"Ye gentlemen of England,
Who live at home at ease,
Oh, little do ye think upon
The dangers of the seas."--OLD SONG.

Rather more than eighty years ago, a stout little boy, in his sixth or
seventh year, was despatched from an old-fashioned farm-house in the
upper part of the parish of Cromarty, to drown a litter of puppies in an
adjacent pond. The commission seemed to be not in the least congenial.
He sat down beside the pool, and began to cry over his charge; and
finally, after wasting much time in a paroxysm of indecision and sorrow,
instead of committing the puppies to the water, he tucked them up in his
little kilt, and set out by a blind pathway which went winding through
the stunted heath of the dreary Maolbuoy Common, in a direction opposite
to that of the farm-house--his home for the two previous twelvemonths.
After some doubtful wandering on the waste, he succeeded in reaching,
before nightfall, the neighbouring seaport town, and presented himself,
laden with his charge, at his mother's door. The poor woman--a sailor's
widow, in very humble circumstances--raised her hands in astonishment:
"Oh, my unlucky boy," she exclaimed, "what's this?--what brings you
here?" "The little doggies, mither," said the boy; "I couldna drown the
little doggies;