The Story of My Boyhood and Youth | Page 8

I remember, as if it happened this
day, how my heart fairly ached and choked me. Mother put us to bed
and tried to comfort us, telling us that the little birds would be well fed
and grow big, and soon learn to sing in pretty cages; but again and

again we rehearsed the sad story of the poor bereaved birds and their
frightened children, and could not be comforted. Father came into the
room when we were half asleep and still sobbing, and I heard mother
telling him that, "a' the bairns' hearts were broken over the robbing of
the nest in the elm."
After attaining the manly, belligerent age of five or six years, very few
of my schooldays passed without a fist fight, and half a dozen was no
uncommon number. When any classmate of our own age questioned
our rank and standing as fighters, we always made haste to settle the
matter at a quiet place on the Davel Brae. To be a "gude fechter" was
our highest ambition, our dearest aim in life in or out of school. To be a
good scholar was a secondary consideration, though we tried hard to
hold high places in our classes and gloried in being Dux. We fairly
reveled in the battle stories of glorious William Wallace and Robert the
Bruce, with which every breath of Scotch air is saturated, and of course
we were all going to be soldiers. On the Davel Brae battleground we
often managed to bring on something like real war, greatly more
exciting than personal combat. Choosing leaders, we divided into two
armies. In winter damp snow furnished plenty of ammunition to make
the thing serious, and in summer sand and grass sods. Cheering and
shouting some battle-cry such as "Bannockburn! Bannockburn!
Scotland forever! The Last War in India!" we were led bravely on. For
heavy battery work we stuffed our Scotch blue bonnets with snow and
sand, sometimes mixed 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 on great million-dollar cases. I can't conceive of
anything that would now enable me to concentrate my attention more
fully than when I was a mere stripling boy, and it was all done by
whipping,--thrashing in general. Old-fashioned Scotch teachers spent
no time in seeking short roads