ed with gravel, and fired them at
each other as cannon-balls.

Of course we always looked eagerly forward to vacation days and
thought them slow in coming. Old Mungo Siddons gave us a lot of
gooseberries or currants and wished us a happy time. Some sort of
special closing-exercises--singing, recitations, etc.--celebrated the
great day, but I remember only the berries, freedom from school work,
and opportunities for run-away rambles in the fields and along the
wave-beaten seashore.

An exciting time came when at the age of seven or eight years I left
the auld Davel Brae school for the grammar school. Of course I had a
terrible lot of fighting to do, because a new scholar had to meet
every one of his age who dared to challenge him, this being the common
introduction to a new school. It was very strenuous for the first
month or so, establishing my fighting rank, taking up new studies,
especially Latin and French, getting acquainted with new classmates
and the master and his rules. In the first few Latin and French
lessons the new teacher, Mr. Lyon, blandly smiled at our comical
blunders, but pedagogical weather of the severest kind quickly set
in, when for every mistake, everything short of perfection, the taws
was promptly applied. We had to get three lessons every day in Latin,
three in French, and as many in English, besides spelling, history,
arithmetic, and geography. Word lessons in particular, the
wouldst-couldst-shouldst-have-loved kind, were kept up, with much
warlike thrashing, until I had committed the whole of the French,
Latin, and English grammars to memory, and in connection with
reading-lessons we were called on to recite parts of them with the
rules over and over again, as if all the regular and irregular
incomprehensible verb stuff was poetry. In addition to all this,
father made me learn so many Bible verses every day that by the time I
was eleven years of age I had about three fourths of the Old Testament
and all of the New by heart and by sore flesh. I could recite the New
Testament from the beginning of Matthew to the end of Revelation
without a single stop. The dangers of cramming and of making scholars
study at home instead of letting their little brains rest were never
heard of in those days. We carried our school-books home in a strap
every night and committed to memory our next day's lessons before we
went to bed, and to do that we had to bend our attention as closely on
our tasks as lawyers o