O! I'm blyde I'm at the tatties, I'm blyde I'm at the tatties, I'm blyde I'm at the tatties, Wi' auchteenpence a day! Blyde means glad, but there is but little gladness in the band that trudges up the rigs in the morning twilight. Jim Jackson is sometimes in good form. He has taken on the swaying gait of the young ploughman; he hasn't got the pockets that are situated in the front of the trousers, but he shoves his hands down the inside instead, and he says: "Ma Goad, you lads, hurry up afore the Boss comes roond wi' the digger again!" They call me the Boss now; Macdonald is the Mester. They seldom mention the school at all; if they do it is to recall some incident that happened in my time. But already the memory of our happy days is becoming hazy; life is too interesting for children to recall memories. To-day Jim sat and gazed absently at my bothy fire. "Now, bairns," I said, "Jim's got an idea. Cough it up, Jim." "Aw was thinkin' o' the tattie-digger," he said slowly; "it seems an awfu' roondaboot wye o' liftin' tatties. Could we no invent a digger that wud hoal the tatties and gaither them at the same time?" "Laziness is the mother of invention," I remarked. "But ... cud a machine no be invented?" he asked. "You could have a sort o' basket," he went on, "that ceppit a' the tatties as they were thrown oot." "Dinna haver!" interjected Janet, "it wud cep a' the stanes at the same time." "If spuds were made o' steel," said Jim, "ye cud draw them oot wi' a magnet." "And if the sky fell you would catch larks," said I. "If the sea dried up!" said Ellen, and Jim instantly forgot his patent tattie-digger. "Crivens! What a fine essay that wud mak! Why did ye no gie us that for an essay?" "Take it on now," I suggested, but he ignored the suggestion. "The Mester gae me a book to read in the holidays," he said irrelevantly, "and it's called _Self Help_; it's a' aboot laddies that got on weel." I ceased to listen to their talk. I thought of Samuel Smiles and his Victorian ideals. The book is iniquitous nowadays; it is the Bible of the individualist. Get on! I'm afraid that Smiles' idea of getting on is still popular in Scotland; the country might well adapt the popular song "Get Out and Get Under," changing it to "Get On or Get Under" and making it the national anthem of Scotland. I once compared _Self Help_ with Lorimer's _Letters of a Self-made Merchant to his Son_, and was struck by the similarity of the ideals. Lorimer's book is an Americanised _Self-help_. Smiles is slightly better. With him getting on means more than the amassing of wealth; it means gaining position, which being interpreted means returning to your native village with prosperous rotundity and a gold chain.