Part 1 (1/2)
My Schools and Schoolh Miller
TO THE READER
It is now nearly a hundred years since Goldsmith remarked, in his little educational treatise, that ”few subjects have been more frequently written upon than the education of youth” And during the century which has well-nigh elapsed since he said so, there have been so iven to the world on this fertile topic, that their number has been at least doubled Alreat ht any, deeinal on education; and perhaps few books of the kind have yet appeared, howeverworthy of being attended to has not actually been said
And yet, though I have read not a few volureat many more, I never yet found in the out my own education, I most needed They insisted --or, what a to the purpose--on the bestone's-self And as my circumstances and position, at the time when I had est class of the people of this and every other civilized country--for I was one of the many millions who need to learn, and yet have no one to teach the the omission a serious one I have since come to think, however, that a forht fail to supply the want Curiosity must be awakened ere it can be satisfied; nay, once awakened, it never fails in the end fully to satisfy itself; and it has occurred tomen of the country the ”Story oftheir curiosity, and next, occasionally at least, in gratifying it also
They will find that by far the best schools I ever attended are schools open to theh severe in their discipline) always easy of access--and that the special _form_ at which I was, if I may say so, most successful as a pupil, was a for inclination, but at which I had less assistance from my brother men, or even from books, than at any of the others There are few of the natural sciences which do not lie quite as open to the working y did to me
My work, then, if I have not wholly failed in it, arded as a sort of educational treatise, thrown into the narrative for men They will find that a considerable portion of the scenes and incidents which it records read their lesson, whether of encouragehts on peculiarities of character or curious natural phenoht be not unprofitably directed
Should it be found to possess an interest to any other class, it will be an interest chiefly derivable frolimpses which it furnishes of the inner life of the Scottish people, and its bearing on what has been somewhat clumsily termed ”the condition-of-the-country question” My sketches will, I trust, be recognised as true to fact and nature And as I have never perused the autobiography of a workingindebted to it for new facts and ideas respecting the circumstances and character of some portion of the people hich I had been less perfectly acquainted before, I can hope that, regarded sih _districts_ of society not yet very sedulously explored, and scenes which few readers have had an opportunity of observing for themselves, my story may be found to possess some of the interest which attaches to the narratives of travellers who see what is not often seen, and know, in consequence, what is not generally known In a work cast into the autobiographic forize for With himself for his subject, he usually tells not only ht, but also, in not a few instances, more than he intends For, as has been well remarked, whatever may be the character which a writer of his own Me, he rarely fails to betray the real one
He has almost always his unintentional revelations, that exhibit peculiarities of which he is not conscious, and weaknesses which he has failed to recognise as such; and it will no doubt be seen that what is so generally done in works si
But I cast ood-nature of the reader My airee succeed in rousing the humbler classes to the iovernher that there are instances in which working itimate a claim to their respect as to their pity, I shall not deeh for the accomplishment of ends so important
MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS OR THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION
CHAPTER I
”Ye gentleland, Who live at hoers of the seas”--OLD SONG
Rather o, a stout little boy, in his sixth or seventh year, was despatched from an old-fashi+oned farm-house in the upper part of the parish of Cromarty, to drown a litter of puppies in an adjacent pond The coenial
He sat down beside the pool, and began to cry over his charge; and finally, after wasting much time in a paroxys the puppies to the water, he tucked them up in his little kilt, and set out by a blind pathhich inding through the stunted heath of the dreary Maolbuoy Common, in a direction opposite to that of the farm-house--his home for the two previous twelve on the waste, he succeeded in reaching, before nightfall, the neighbouring seaport town, and presented hie, at his mother's door The poor woman--a sailor's , in very humble circumstances--raised her hands in astonishment: ”Oh, s you here?” ”The little doggies, ies; and I took theies,” I know not; but trivial as the incident may seem, it exercised a marked influence on the circuenerations of creatures higher in the scale than themselves
The boy, as he stubbornly refused to return to the farreeably to his wish, as a cabin-boy; and the writer of these chapters was born, in consequence, a sailor's son, and was rendered, as early as his fifth year, mainly dependent for his support on the sedulously plied but indifferently re parent, at the time a sailor's
The little boy of the far men,--skilful and adventurous sailors,--so the Scottish shores as early as the times of Sir Andrew Wood and the ”bold Bartons,” and mayhap helped to man that ”verrie monstrous schippe the Great Michael,” that ”cuet her to sea” They had taken as naturally to the water as the Newfoundland dog or the duckling That waste of life which is always so great in the naval profession had been eneration just passed away Of the boy's two uncles, one had sailed round the world with Anson, and assisted in burning Paita, and in boarding the Manilla galleon; but on reaching the English coast he mysteriously disappeared, and was never more heard of The other uncle, a remarkably handsome and powerful e in which I have heard him described, ”as _pretty_ a fellow as ever stepped in shoe-leather,”--perished at sea in a stor the Firth of Croust, by the boom of his vessel, and, apparently stunned by the blow, never rose again Shortly after, in the hope of screening her son from what seemed to be the hereditary fate, his e of a sister, married to a farmer of the parish, and now the mistress of the farm-house of Ardavell; but the faement terminated, as has been seen, in the transaction beside the pond
In course of tirew up into a singularly robust and active ht never exceeded five feet eight inches,--but broad-shouldered, deep-chested, strong-limbed, and so compact of bone and muscle, that in a shi+p of the line, in which he afterwards sailed, there was not, a five hundred able-bodied searapple with him on equal terms His education had been but indifferently cared for at hoht to read by a female cousin, a niece of his hter and theof a sailor; and for his cousin's only child, a girl soer than hier forrew up In the leisure thrown on his-hands in long Indian and Chinese voyages, he learned to write; and profited so ent and warh reckless Irish-book, and to take a reckoning with the necessary correctness,--acco ordinary sailors He for The recollection of his cousin's daughter may have influenced him, but he commenced life with a deter up instead of drinking his grog,--and, as was common in those tin parts in articles of curiosity and vertu, for which, I suspect, the custom-house dues were not always paid
With all his Scotch prudence, however, and with much kindliness of heart and placidity of temper there was some wild blood in his veins, derived,ancestors, that, when excited beyond the endurance point, became sufficiently formidable; and which, on at least one occasion, interfered very considerably with his plans and prospects
On a protracted and tedious voyage in a large East Indiaman, he had, with the rest of the crew, been subjected to harsh usage by a stern, capricious captain; but, secure of relief on reaching port, he had borne uncoly with it all His comrade and quondam teacher, the Irish with the tyrant, as one of a deputation of the seamen, in as deemed a mutinous spirit, he was laid hold of, and was in the course of being ironed down to the deck under a tropical sun, when his quieter co point, stepped aft, and with apparent calrievance The captain drew a loaded pistol from his belt; the sailor struck up his hand; and, as the bullet whistled through the rigging above, he grappled with him, and disarmed him in a trice The crew rose, and in a fewfailed to calculate on such a result, they knew not what to do with their charge; and, acting under the advice of their new leader, who felt to the full the e nature of the position, they were content sirievances as their terms of surrender; when, untowardly for their claiht,down on the India rave charge, and the worst possible of characters Luckily for them, however, and especially luckily for the Irishman and his friend, the war-shi+p was so weakened by scurvy, at that time the untamed pest of the navy, that scarce two dozen of her crew could do duty aloft A fierce tropical te after, pleaded powerfully in their favour; and the affair terminated in the ultimate promotion of the Irishman to the office of shi+p-schoolmaster, and of his Scotch comrade to the captaincy of the foretop
My narrative abides with the latter He reh not much in love with the service, did his duty in both storer-Bank,--one of the last naval engageave to British valour its due superiority, by rendering all our great sea-battles decisive; and a comrade who sailed in the same vessel, and from whom, when a boy, I have received kindness forbut indifferently th and activity of his friend well known, he had a station assigned hi the action he actually outwrought theth, however, the eneashed and severed rigging, such was his state of exhaustion, in consequence of the previous overstrain on every nerve and h left to raise the spike employed in the work to the level of his face Suddenly, when in this condition, a signal passed along the line, that the Dutch fleet, already refitted, was bearing down to renew the engageh the fraue at once left hian, he found hiainst his two comrades the one side of a four-and-twenty pounder The instance is a curious one of the influence of that ”spirit” which, according to the Wise King, enables a man to ”sustain his infirarding the mode in which this effective sailor quitted the navy The country had borrowed his services without consulting his will; and he, I suspect, reclai leave I have been told by my mother that he found the navy very intolerable;--the mutiny at the Nore had not yetother hardshi+ps, he had been oftener than once under not only very harsh, but also very inco on the foreyard in a violent night-squall, with some of the best seamen aboard, in fruitless attempts to furl up the sail, he had to descend, cap in hand, at the risk of a flogging, and hue that he should order the vessel's head to be laid in a certain direction Luckily for hientleman, and in a few minutes the sail was furled He left his shi+p one fineon his head a three-cornered hat, with tufts of lace at the corners, which I well re after to perform an important part in certain boyish masquerades at Christmas and the New Year; and as he had taken effective precautions for being reported ot clear off
Of somentary recollections, dissociated froht be ination of a child At one ties, he was stationed during the night, accole comrade, in a ses; and he had just fallen asleep on the beams, when he was suddenly awakened by a violentup, he saw in the ier, that had swale, in the act of boarding the boat So h a loaded musket lay beside him, it was one of the loose bea, that he laid hold of as a weapon; but such was the blow he dealt to the paws of the creature, as they rested on the gunwale, that it dropped off with a tremendous snarl, and he saw it no more On another occasion, he was one of three men sent with despatches to so in the open sea in a squall, left thereater part of three days only its upturned botto that ti of rum, part of the boat's stores, floated for the first two days within a few yards of theh they all sell, dared atteth relieved by a Spanish vessel, and treated with such kindness, that the subject of my narrative used ever after to speak well of the Spaniards, as a generous people, destined ultimately to rise He was at one time so reduced by scurvy, in a vessel half of whose crew had been carried off by the disease, that, though still able to do duty on the tops, the pressure of his finger left for several seconds a dent in his thigh, as if the h At another time, when overtaken in a small vessel by a protracted tempest, in which ”for many days neither sun nor moon appeared,” he continued to retain his hold of the helm for twelve hours after every other man aboard was utterly prostrated and down, and succeeded, in consequence, in weathering the storm for the man who had served his apprenticeshi+p under hireat kindness on the Spanish Main, for his sake, by a West Indian captain, whose shi+p and crew he had saved, as the captain told the lad, by boarding the their vessel into port, when, in circu full upon an iron-bound shore Many of mentary in their character; but there is a distinct bit of picture in thely impressed the boyish fancy
When not much turned of thirty, the sailor returned to his native toith h, hardly earned, and carefully kept, to buy a fine large sloop, hich he engaged in the coasting trade; and shortly after he hter He found his cousin, who had supported herself in her hood by teaching a school, residing in a dingy, old-fashi+oned house, three rooth, but with the s of its second story half-buried in the eaves, that had been left her by their randfather, old John Feddes, one of the last of the buccaneers It had been built, I have every reason to believe, with Spanish gold; not, however, with a great deal of it, for, notwithstanding its six rooreatly into disrepair It was fitted up with soe, became his home,--a home rendered all the happier by the presence of his cousin, now rising in years, and who, during her long hood, had sought and found consolation, amid her troubles and privations, where it was surest to be found She was ahis es,--for he sometimes traded with ports of the Baltic on the one hand, and with those of Ireland and the south of England on the other,--had the co that his wife, who had fallen into a state of health chronically delicate, was sedulously tended and cared for by a devoted mother The happiness which he would have otherwise enjoyed was, however, reat delicacy of constitution, and ultihted by two unhappy accidents