mpossible, my tales used to assemble an admiring audience round Lucky
Brown's fireside, and happy was he that could sit next to the
inexhaustible narrator. I was also, though often negligent of my own
task, always ready to assist my friends, and hence I had a little
party of stanch partisans and adherents, stout of hand and heart,
though somewhat dull of head--the very tools for raising a hero to
eminence. So, on the whole, I made a brighter figure in the _yards_
than in the _class_[29]

[Footnote 29: I read not long since, in that authentic
record called the _Percy Anecdotes_, that I had been educated
at Musselburgh school, where I had been distinguished as an
absolute dunce; only Dr. Blair, seeing farther into the
millstone, had pronounced there was fire in it. I never was
at Musselburgh school in my life, and though I have met Dr.
Blair at my father's and elsewhere, I never had the good
fortune to attract his notice, to my knowledge. Lastly, I was
never a dunce, nor thought to be so, but an incorrigibly idle
imp, who was always longing to do something else than what
was enjoined him.--(1826.)]

My {p.025} father did not trust our education solely to our High
School lessons. We had a tutor at home, a young man of an excellent
disposition, and a laborious student. He was bred to the Kirk, but
unfortunately took such a very strong turn to fanaticism, that he
afterwards resigned an excellent living in a seaport town, merely
because he could not persuade the mariners of the guilt of setting
sail of a Sabbath,--in which, by the bye, he was less likely to be
successful, as, _caeteris paribus_, sailors, from an opinion that it is
a fortunate omen, always choose to weigh anchor on that day. The
calibre of this young man's understanding may be judged of by this
anecdote; but in other respects he was a faithful and active
instructor; and from him chiefly I learned writing and arithmetic. I
repeated to him my French lessons, and studied with him my themes in
the classics, but not classically. I also acquired, by disputing with
him (for this he readily permitted), some knowledge of school divinity
and church history, and a great acquaintance in particular with the
old books describing the early history of the Church of Scotland, the
wars and sufferings of the Covenanters, and so forth. I, with a head
on fire for chivalry, was a Ca