after involuntarily performing it, 'There
goes the old shop again!'" Which of us now could see that flourish
without the water coming into our eyes?

[Illustration: THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH]

It is impossible to eradicate, from the minds of youthful students at
least, the admiration which always attends the performances of the young
man who gains his successes without apparently working for them. As a
matter of fact, it is the work which we ought to respect rather than
that apparently fortuitous accidental result: but nothing will ever cure
us of our native delight in an effect which appears to have no vulgar
cause, and great has been the misery produced by this prejudice to many
a youth who has begun with the tradition of easy triumph and presumed
upon it to the loss of all his after-life. But when there shows in the
apparent idler a sign like this of many a long hour's labour ignored and
lightly thought of, covered over with a pleasant veil of fun and ease
and happy leisure, the combination is one that no heart can resist.

Scott had read everything he could lay his hands on while he was still a
child, and boasted himself a virtuoso, that is, according to his
explanation, at six years old, "one who wishes and will know
everything;" but his boyish tastes and triumphs became more and more
athletic as he gained a firmer use of his bodily powers. No diseased
consciousness of disability in respect to his lameness, like that which
embittered Byron, could find a place in the rough wholesome atmosphere
of the Edinburgh High School and playgrounds, where nobody was too
delicate about reminding him of his infirmity, and the stout-hearted
little hero took it like a man, offering "to fight mounted," and being
tied upon a board accordingly for his first combat. "You may take him
for a poor lameter," said one of the Eldin Clerks, a sailor, with equal
friendly frankness to a party of strangers, "but he is the first to
begin a row, and the last to end it." To such a youth the imperfection
was a virtue the more. When the jovial band strolled forth upon long
walks the cheerful "lameter" bargained for three miles an hour, and kept
up with the best. They would start at five in the morning, beguiling the
way with endless pranks, on one occasion at least without a single
sixpence in all their youthful pockets with which to refresh themselves
during a thirty miles' round. "We asked every now and then at a cottage
door for a drink of wa