Page:Robert Carter- his life and work. 1807-1889 (IA robertcarterhis00coch).pdf/42

26 could reach. The minister of the Relief Church, Rev. David Crawford, had his Sabbath school in my schoolhouse on Sunday afternoon, and a Bible class in the evening, and he invited me to take tea with him in the interval between the two sessions. This proved a great help to me, as he was a man of culture and refinement, and his library was open to me. His wife was a lineal descendant of the great Reformer, John Knox, and he sent me, after I came to America, a genealogical tree of her family, traced down through the three hundred years. He was afterwards called to Edinburgh to be a Secretary of the United Presbyterian Church.

“During this period, Professor Pillans of Edinburgh gave a course of lectures to the teachers of Scotland. Anxious to hear these lectures, I walked to Edinburgh, a distance of thirty miles. I left home on a Monday morning, a few minutes after midnight, and reached Edinburgh at ten o’clock, in time to hear the first lecture. The course was very suggestive to me, and enabled me to turn a new leaf. On Saturday at 1 I started for home, and reached it before midnight. Professor Pillans was the fellow student of Lord Byron and Sir Walter Scott, and gave me many incidents of early days. He afterwards proved a most valuable friend.”

Mr. Walter Carter writes the following reminiscence of this time:—

“The school was in a stone house near the ‘Green,’ on the Main Street. The large room was full of busy scholars, and the most rigid discipline, as in all the Scottish schools of that day, was maintained. As winter came on, there were signs of excitement in the school, as the habit was to bolt out the master on the shortest day, and have a holiday. When we reached the school that morning, we found the