"Humanity or no humanity, my man, it's no peppermint drops nor pats on the head that'll rule Muirtown birkies; their fathers were brought up on the stick, and the stick'll make the sons men. If ye'll take my advice, Mr. Byles, adverteese for a situation in a lassies' school. Ye're ower dainty for Muirtown Seminary." This was not a charge which his worst enemy could bring against Mr. Dugald MacKinnon, and because he was the very opposite--a most unflinching, resolute, iron man--he engraved himself on the hearts of three generations of Muirtown men. They were a dour, hard-headed, enterprising lot--a blend from the upland braes of Drumtochty and the stiff carse of Gowrie and the Celts of Lock Tay, with some good south country stuff--and there are not many big cities on either side of the Atlantic where two or three Muirtown men cannot this day be found. They always carry in their hearts the "Fair City"--which lieth in a basin among the hills, beside the clean, swift-running river, like a Scots Florence; and they grow almost eloquent when they start upon their home, but the terminus of recollection is ever the same. When they have dallied with the swimming in the Tay, and the climbing of the hill which looks down on the fair plain as far as Dundee, and the golf on the meadows, and the mighty snow fights in days where there were men (that is, boys) in the land, and memory is fairly awake, some one suddenly says, "Bulldog." "Ah!" cries another, with long-drawn pleasure, as one tasting a delicate liquor; and "Bulldog," repeats the third, as if a world of joy lay in the word. They rest for a minute, bracing themselves, and then conversation really begins, and being excited, they drop into the Scots tongue. "Man," hurries in the first, "a' see him stannin' at his desk in the mornin' watchin' the laddies comin' in ower the top o' his spectacles, an' juist considerin' wha wud be the better o' a bit thrashin' that day." "Sax feet high gin he wes an inch," bursts in the second, "an' as straight as a rush, though a'm thinkin' he wes seventy, or maybe eighty, some threipit (insisted) he was near ninety; an' the een o' him--div ye mind, lads, hoo they gied back an' forward in his head--oscillatin' like? Sall, they were fearsome." "An' the rush to get in afore the last stroke o' nine"--the third man cannot be restrained--"an' the crack o' his cane on the desk an' 'Silence'; man, ye micht hae heard a moose cross the floor at the prayer." "Div ye think he keekit oot atween his eyelids, Jock?" "Him? nae fear o't," and Howieson is full of contempt. "Ae day I pit a peen into that smooth-faced wratch Dowbiggin, juist because I cudna bear the look o' him; an' if he didna squeal like a stuck pig. Did Bulldog open his een an' look?" The audience has no remembrance of such a humiliating descent.