Stories of Achievement, Volume IV | Page 5

gentleman of small estate in the neighbourhood of Ayr. Had he
continued in that station, I must have marched off to be one of the little
underlings about a farmhouse; but it was his dearest wish and prayer to
have it in his power to keep his children under his own eye till they
could discern between good and evil; so with the assistance of his
generous master, my father ventured on a small farm on his estate.
At those years, I was by no means a favourite with anybody. I was a
good deal noted for a retentive memory, a stubborn, sturdy something
in my disposition, and an enthusiastic, idiotic piety. I say idiotic piety
because I was then but a child. Though it cost the schoolmaster some
thrashings, I made an excellent English scholar; and by the time I was
ten or eleven years of age, I was a critic in substantives, verbs, and
particles. In my infant and boyish days, too, I owe much to an old
woman who resided in the family, remarkable for her ignorance,
credulity, and superstition. She had, I suppose, the largest collection in
the country of tales and songs concerning devils, ghosts, fairies,
brownies, witches, warlocks, spunkies, kelpies, elf-candles, dead-lights,
wraiths, apparitions, cantraips, giants, enchanted towers, dragons, and
other trumpery. This cultivated the latent seeds of poetry; but had so
strong an effect on my imagination that to this hour in my nocturnal
rambles I sometimes keep a sharp lookout in suspicious places; and
though nobody can be more sceptical than I am in such matters, yet it
often takes an effort of philosophy to shake off these idle terrors.
The earliest composition that I recollect taking pleasure in was "The

Vision of Mirza," and a hymn of Addison's beginning, "How are thy
servants blest, O Lord!" I particularly remember one half-stanza which
was music to my boyish ear--
For though on dreadful whirls we hung High on the broken wave--
I met with these pieces in Mason's English Collection, one of my
schoolbooks. The first two books I ever read in private, and which gave
me more pleasure than any two books I ever read since, were "The Life
of Hannibal" and "The History of Sir William Wallace." Hannibal gave
my young ideas such a turn that I used to strut in raptures up and down
after the recruiting drum and bagpipe and wish myself tall enough to be
a soldier; while the story of Wallace poured a Scottish prejudice into
my veins, which will boil along there till the floodgates of life shut in
eternal rest.
Polemical divinity about this time was putting the country half mad,
and I, ambitious of shining in conversation parties on Sundays, between
sermons, at funerals, etc., used a few years afterward to puzzle
Calvinism with so much heat and indiscretion that I raised a hue and
cry of heresy against me, which has not ceased to this hour.
My vicinity to Ayr was of some advantage to me. My social disposition,
when not checked by some modifications of spirited pride, was like our
catechism definition of infinitude, without bounds or limits. I formed
several connections with other younkers, who possessed superior
advantages; the youngling actors who were busy in the rehearsal of
parts, in which they were shortly to appear on the stage of life, where,
alas! I was destined to drudge behind the scenes. It is not commonly at
this green age that our young gentry have a just sense of the immense
distance between them and their ragged playfellows. It takes a few
dashes into the world to give the young, great man that proper, decent,
unnoticing disregard for the poor, insignificant, stupid devils, the
mechanics and peasantry around him, who were, perhaps, born in the
same village. My young superiors never insulted the clouterly
appearance of my plough-boy carcase, the two extremes of which were
often exposed to all the inclemencies of all the seasons. They would
give me stray volumes of books; among them, even then, I could pick

up some observations, and one, whose heart, I am sure, not even the
"Munny Begum" scenes have tainted, helped me to a little French.
Parting with these my young friends and benefactors, as they
occasionally went off for the East or West Indies, was often to me a
sore affliction; but I was soon called to more serious evils. My father's
generous master died, the farm proved a ruinous bargain; and to clench
the misfortune, we fell into the hands of a factor, who sat for the picture
I have drawn of one in my tale of "Twa Dogs." My father was
advanced in life when he married; I was the eldest of seven children,
and he, worn out by early hardships, was