I now come to my schooldays in the distant years 1852-4. My father, as I have already said, was a minister of religion for fifty years at Newcastle. He was one of the gentlest and noblest of men, one whom I have never ceased to revere as the very pattern and exemplar of a Christian gentleman. But those who follow such a calling cannot expect to gain riches as their reward, and my father was a poor man. Despite his poverty, he was resolved that his sons should have the best education that he could procure for them. That meant that they must be sent to the best school in the town--Percy Street Academy. So when my elder brother in 1848 was of school age, he took him to Mr., not then Dr., Bruce, to enter him as a pupil. I have no doubt that he went with some trepidation, knowing full well that the school fees would be a heavy tax upon his small income. I was sitting with my mother in the drawing-room of Summerhill Terrace when my father returned, and I saw that there was an unwonted brightness on his gentle face. He told my mother how Mr. Bruce, after examining my brother, had pronounced him to be fully qualified to enter the school; and then my father asked about the fees. The answer he received was, "My dear Mr. Reid, I never take a fee from a minister of religion." And so it came to pass that not only my brother James but myself and my two younger brothers were educated at Percy Street without any fee being paid on our behalf. No one will wonder that I cherish Dr. Bruce's memory with unstinted gratitude and reverence. Schooldays, despite the popular theory, are, as a matter of fact, generally as uninteresting to the schoolboy as their story is to the public, and I shall not detain the reader with much about this period of my life. Dr. Collingwood Bruce, the father, by the way, of Mr. Justice Bruce, was then and long afterwards the most famous school master in the North of England, and under him I received that small fraction of my education which a man usually obtains during pupilage. Percy Street Academy, Newcastle, has long since disappeared, after having counted no inconsiderable proportion of the best-known residents among its pupils. It occupied a series of rambling buildings with an imposing house at the end of the row, in which lived "The Doctor," the assistant masters, and the boarders. But though the school is gone, my old schoolmaster died but recently, enjoying to the last the respect of his fellow citizens and the repose of a happy old age. He is known to fame as the author of the leading work on the Roman Wall, and as an antiquary of high repute. I have a grateful recollection of many of his acts during my school career; and, looking back, there are none I now esteem more highly than the attempts he constantly made to interest his pupils in the general affairs of the world outside the school-gates.