Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 15.djvu/122

112 Another incident of this summer must be noted. He fell into a small rivulet, wet his clothes, and remained out while they dried. He caught a severe cold, and was sent home to die of consumption.

His school education began when he was five or six years old. The schoolroom was small, low in ceiling, and crowded with children. In the course of the summer his strength gave out. He says:

From nine to twelve I could see to read; but in the afternoon, from one to three, the letters were hazy and I could not distinguish them. I told the teacher my condition and was sent home. When I told the family why I left school there was great wonderment. My brother John thought I was shamming. He put pieces of wheaten bread and oat-cake of similar size and appearance before me and asked which was which. I could not tell. He then gave me the aid of my father's spectacles, and I at once named the crumbs correctly. He thought he had now caught me, for he said, "A young person can not see clearly with an old person's spectacles." I protested my truthfulness, and was mortified at being suspected of deceit. But my mother came to the rescue, and said she did not think I was feigning. She took me from school and put me to sea-bathing. In fact, there was nothing anomalous in my seeing with my father's spectacles: he was little past middle life, and they were of low power. I was probably as much debilitated in brain and eye as an aged man, and the spectacles might suit my condition as well as his. But it is difficult for me to describe the grief and indignation which the suspicions of the family roused within me.

He had a pleasant summer by the sea; the ships sailing up and down the FrithFirth [sic] of Forth, and the fishing-boats which studded the water for miles were objects of vivid wonderment and interest to him.

His next schooling is thus described:

Mr. Campbell, who kept a school near by, taught me to read and spell after the fashion of those days; i.e., I spelled and pronounced the vowels without once dreaming that the words had a meaning. The idea that English words in a printed book were signs of feeling did not dawn upon me till years afterward. I knew only broad Scotch, and an English book was as unintelligible as a Latin book.

As to his religious education at this period he says:

I went regularly to church, but never understood one word of the sermon. This gave rise to a habit of inattention to spoken as well as written language. Whenever I was out of reach of my father's foot and hand I fell asleep, the refreshment of which was the only advantage of my church-going.

When he was six or seven years old he was again sent to the seaside, and left with a family of old people who had no sympathy with children. The months he spent there were full of wretchedness. He thus refers to them:

I slept on a "shake-down" in the garret, and the mice careered over me in the night. During the day I wandered in the harbor, but there were no ships in it; climbed the banks above the town, where were only corn-fields; built castles of wet sand and knocked them down again, all alone; and wearily, wearily did day pass away after day, bringing no change. I was a shy boy, or I might have found acquaintances in the street.