But I am wandering away from my own school, nestling five miles off among the trees under the shadow of the old kirk. It is a plain one-storey building divided into two parts; the one, consisting of three rooms and a kitchen, forming the home of the schoolmaster, and the other the schoolroom,—a tolerably large and airy apartment, with roughly plastered walls, and furnished with deal desks and forms of the universal school fashion. I do not remember that there were, at any time, more than sixty scholars. They were gathered together from all parts of the parish. Some of them came from a distance of four or five miles, and brought their dinners with them, the provision invariably consisting of a little tin can of milk and a bag of oat-cakes. It was a rule that each scholar should contribute a load or two of peats every quarter for the school fire; but some of them chose to bring a peat with them every morning. These scholars made their morning’s journey to school rather heavily loaded, having to carry, besides their satchel, the tin can of milk, the white calico bag of oat-cake, and the peat. We were of all ages, sexes, and conditions in this school. There was the son of the laird, the heir to an ancient baronetcy. He wore corderoys like the rest of us, and had five rows of broad-headed nails in his shoes. There were several sons of the minister, all destined for one or other of the learned professions; there were the sons of gentlemen farmers and the sons of poor cottars, their dependants; and with these, on terms of the broadest academic equality, mingled the grandson of the parish sexton and bell-ringer, the son of a widow occasionally receiving parochial relief, and the sons and daughters of carpenters, blacksmiths, and farm-servants, including the female descendant of old Lizzy—pauper and egg vendor—who lit the school fire and swept the school floor in discharge of young Lizzy’s fees. No distinction of rank was preserved in any way whatever. The laird’s son and the grave-digger’s son stood up in the same class side by side, and I remember that the expectant baronet was often “taken down” by the heir of the mortuary mattock. In the reading classes the boys and girls were all mingled together, and I have often seen a big, hulking fellow of eighteen—some ambitious cottar’s son who had taken to education late—standing next to a little girl in short petticoats and heel-strapped shoes. There was little jealousy on the score of religious belief in the parish. There were several Roman Catholic boys among us, and they joined in all our exercises, except the reading of the Bible and the saying of the Shorter Catechism. At these times the Roman Catholic boys sat in their seats and amused themselves; and not unfrequently, when memory failed with regard to Justification, Sanctification, and Adoption, we, Protestants, smarting under the consequences, were tempted to wish from the bottom of our hearts that we had been brought up Papists.