In advanced life she loved to dwell on her early unchecked rambles over heaths compared to which Hampstead was a common; on her endless “paidling” in innumerable burns, tributaries of the Clyde. She was wont to regret wistfully that she could no longer “pad” barefooted on the grass or “plowter” in the water. And she would eagerly recommend to dainty and horrified English matrons the entire wholesomeness and happiness of letting their petted children run bare-footed in summer. * * * * * [Sidenote: Education.] Whatever more valuable acquisitions Joanna made in these young days she was singularly deficient in learning, as the term is generally understood. “At nine I could not read plainly,” Joanna Baillie told Lucy Aikin. “At nine, Joanna?” her sister Agnes called her back. “You could not read well at eleven.”... The worthy minister took the stout little ignoramus in hand along with his breakfast. She spoilt the flavor of his trout and cake and black pudding by crying throughout each lesson. It was thought that a change was called for in order to conquer Joanna’s repugnance to sedentary studies, and her passion for open-air pursuits and boyish pranks. At ten years of age she was accordingly sent, along with her elder sister, to Miss Macdonald’s boarding-school, in the heart of the city of Glasgow.... Joanna learned to read perfectly at the Glasgow boarding-school, as doubtless she also learned more or less serviceable writing and arithmetic, and correct or incorrect notions in geography and history. If she did not learn much else beyond singing a little to the guitar, and making a few promising attempts at drawing and dancing, still the school did its part. The study for which she showed a particular inclination was mathematics--a fact which is characteristic of the clear-headed girl. Of her own free will and entirely unassisted, she mastered a considerable portion of Euclid. [Sidenote: Private theatricals.]