The moment the dominie advanced to seize him Johnny scrambled over a desk and dodged him; and when the dominie ran round after him he scrambled back again. The miller’s wife now came to the dominie’s assistance, and for nearly a quarter of an hour both together hunted Johnny over the desks and forms, hitting out at him with the tag and the tongs, while the books, and slates, and milk-cans were scattered all over the floor like broken armour on a battle-field. It was not until Johnny was fairly out of breath that he gave in; and then he lay down on his back on the floor, and turning himself rapidly round as on a pivot, menaced first the dominie and then his mother with his iron-shod feet. Johnny managed to resist the extreme penalty designed for him, but what with the bumps he received in riding over the desks, and the random blows from the tongs and the tag, he had punishment enough and to spare. Of course, as we all saw and felt that this constant flagellation was both cruel and unjust, we were never any better for it, and bore it or resisted it manfully, as martyrs bear and resist persecution. But notwithstanding the loose and desultory, not to say brutal, system pursued at our school, the pupils of all degrees managed, in some way or other, to acquire a very respectable quantum of knowledge, or, if not knowledge itself, the groundwork of knowledge. The boys who learned Greek and Latin went to college and took their degrees; the farmers’ sons went home to give a higher intellectual life to the society in which their families moved; and the humbler class of scholars carried away with them to the plough’s tail, the carpenter’s bench, and the smithy, just enough of the rudiments of learning to enable them to cultivate themselves by after study. This fact may seem a contradiction to the picture I have given of my Scotch school. In Scotland, however, bad teaching and a high state of mental cultivation among the masses are quite consistent. The fact is, the middle and lower classes in Scotland have a passion for learning. The dearest ambition of the poor cottar is to educate his children, and, if possible, to give one, at least, such an amount of schooling as will fit him for a higher station than that occupied by his parents. A poor hillside crofter will starve himself and his family for ten years of their life to send one of the boys to college and qualify him for the kirk. Such boys, however, learn more poring over their books by the humble fireside at home, or out in the fields in the intervals of their farm work, than at the school. They learn under every disadvantage, because they are spurred on by a love of knowledge and a desire to raise themselves. It is this universal thirst after knowledge and intellectual cultivation that gives Scotland so decided a pre-eminence as regards general education. Persons who can neither read nor write are common enough in England, not alone in the country districts, but also in the great towns.