THERMOMETER, HYGROMETER, BAROMETER, AND
PYROMETER, INVENTED BY THE AUTHOR IN HIS BOYHOOD 196

THE HICKORY HILL HOUSE, BUILT IN 1857 230

THERMOMETER INVENTED BY THE AUTHOR IN HIS BOYHOOD 258

SELF-SETTING SAWMILL. MODEL BUILT IN CELLAR. INVENTED BY
THE AUTHOR IN HIS BOYHOOD 258

MY DESK, MADE AND USED AT THE WISCONSIN STATE UNIVERSITY 284

_The Story of My Boyhood and Youth_

I

A BOYHOOD IN SCOTLAND

Earliest Recollections--The "Dandy Doctor" Terror--Deeds of
Daring--The Savagery of Boys--School and
Fighting--Birds'-nesting.

When I was a boy in Scotland I was fond of everything that was wild,
and all my life I've been growing fonder and fonder of wild places and
wild creatures. Fortunately around my native town of Dunbar, by the
stormy North Sea, there was no lack of wildness, though most of the
land lay in smooth cultivation. With red-blooded playmates, wild as
myself, I loved to wander in the fields to hear the birds sing, and
along the seashore to gaze and wonder at the shells and seaweeds,
eels and crabs in the pools among the rocks when the tide was low; and
best of all to watch the waves in awful storms thundering on the black
headlands and craggy ruins of the old Dunbar Castle when the sea and
the sky, the waves and the clouds, were mingled together as one. We
never thought of playing truant, but after I was five or six years old
I ran away to the seashore or the fields almost every Saturday, and
every day in the school vacations except Sundays, though solemnly
warned that I must play at home in the garden and back yard, lest I
should learn to think bad thoughts and say bad words. All in vain. In
spite of the sure sore punishments that followed like shadows, the
natural inherited wildness in our blood ran true on its glorious
course as invincible and unstoppable as stars.

My earliest recollections of the country were gained on short walks
with my grandfather when I was perhaps not over three years old. On
one of these walks grandfather took me to Lord Lauderdale's gardens,
where I saw figs growing against a sunny wall and tasted some of
them, and got as many apples to eat as I wished. On another memorable
walk in a hay-field, when we sat down to rest on one of the haycocks I
heard a sharp, prickly, stinging cry, and, jumping up eagerly, called
grandfather's attention to it. He said he