At twelve years old I left that school and I think I left happiness behind me: ever since I've lived under cloudy skies. I went to a school in the Isle of Man kept by a Scotchman. That Scotchman brushed the sun out of my sky. I remember, as yesterday, how my father talked about him. He had never been to school himself, having been educated by his father who was a scholar; and it was his conviction that if he had only gone to school and had been efficiently flogged he would have risen to the highest eminence; therefore, he talked of this Scotch school-master with an enthusiasm that was infectious: so that I who shared all his ideas went to my second school, my mind alive with the most pleasant anticipations. When we reached the Island and Athol Academy we were ushered into the library, and I saw my school-master. My father had already tactfully interrogated him about his flogging propensities, so that when he brought into our presence a class of small boys in order that my father and uncle, who was of the party, might test their proficiency, he suddenly asked each boy how many times he had been flogged. As I remember not a boy had escaped. What my uncle thought I don't know, but I know that my courage oozed out at the end of my fingers. My mother had arranged that we three boys should sleep in a room by ourselves. That night when we were going to bed, the housekeeper, a very nice woman who came from Ireland, & I daresay felt a little sorry for her compatriots, by way of distracting our thoughts pulled up the blind and we looked out and there, quite close to the front of the house, we saw the wild waves tumbling under a stormy moon. The next morning between nine o'clock & twelve I saw three boys receive what the master called 'Three capital drubbings.' That night as we lay in our little room we three brothers had become very sober boys. Among the Beatitudes is one which is not in the Bible, but nevertheless is in every Scotchman's bones: 'Blessed are they who expect not, for they shall not be disappointed.'