Page:Remarkable family adventure of Saunders Watson (1).pdf/3



In a remote country parish in the south of Scotland, the above worthy personage was born, bred, and married, and became the father of a family, consisting of one son, named after himself, and three daughters. He rented a few acress of ground, sufficient to graze two cows and to keep one horse; and he had, by the greatest industry, brought up and educated his family in a manner suited to his circumstances—that is, they were quite equal to the task of reading the first chapter of Chronicles, and the tenth of Nehemiah, distinctly. They could also perform the Rule of Three, and write "half-text" hand by the help of squaring—a mode which honest Saunders made them always adhere to; for he said they "just spoilt paper wi' making lines as crooket as rainbows, when they had nought to guide their han' frae ae side o' the sheet to the ither." As to the item of dancing, they had each, by dint of incessant solicitation,