He was the queerest laddie that ever I had at my school. He had neither talent nor cleverness; but he made up for both, and, I may say, more than made up for both, by method and application. Ye would have said that nature had been in a miserly humour when it made his brains; but, if it had been niggardly in the quantity, it certainly had spared no pains in placing them properly. He was the very reverse o' Solitary Sandy. I never could get Watty to scan a line or construe a sentence richt in my days. He did not seem to understand the nature o' words, or, at least, in so far as applied to sentiment, idea, or fine writing. Figures were Watty's alphabet; and, from his earliest years, pounds, shillings, and pence were the syllables by which he joined them together. The abstruser points of mathematics were beyond his intellect; but he seemed to have a liking for the _certainty_ of the science, and he manifested a wish to master it. My housekeeper that then was has informed me that, when a' the rest o' ye wad hae been selling your copies as waste-paper, for _taffy_, or what some ca' _treacle-candy_, Watty would only part wi' his to the paper purchaser for money down; and when ony o' ye took a greenin for the sweet things o' the shopkeeper, without a halfpenny to purchase one, Watty would volunteer to lend ye the money until a certain day, upon condition that ye would then pay him a penny for the loan o' his halfpenny. But he exhibited a grand trait o' this disposition when he cam to learn the rule o' _Compound Interest_. Indeed, I need not say he _learned_, it, for he literally _devoured_ it. He wrought every question in Dilworth's Rule within two days; and, when he had finished it (for he seldom had his slate away from my face, and I was half tired wi' saying to him, "That will do, sir"), he came up to my desk, and, says he, wi' a face as earnest as a judge-- "May I go through this rule again, sir?" "I think ye understand it, Watty," said I, rather significantly. "But I would like to be perfect in it, sir," answered he. "Then go through it again, Watty," said I, "and I have nae doubt but ye will be _perfect_ in it very quickly."