Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume XVI Part 19

And, before I had time to question him as to the whereabouts of his home, and how or when I was to meet him again, he bounded over the gate, and disappeared.

That same evening, I was sitting in Edward Thompson's comfortable parlour, reading my favourite, Burns; Elsie was knitting near me, and Ellen was preparing some of the trout that I had brought home for supper. The sun had long set, and the twilight was only just beginning to fade into night; the window was open to admit the mild evening air; and the song of the thrush and blackbird had usurped the place of all other sounds with sweet melody.

Just as we were about to seat ourselves at the plain but comfortable board, we heard some one at a short distance whistling the air of

"Dinna think, bonny la.s.s, I'm gaun to leave you."

And immediately afterwards, a fine, clear, manly voice sang--

"I'll tak my stick into my hand, And come again and see you."

Ellen started, and turned pale.

"What ails the la.s.s?" said her father, when the door burst open, and, glowing with health and exercise, my friend of the morning stood before us.

The old people stared with surprise; their memory was at fault. Not so Ellen: she blushed, turned pale; and burst into tears.

"Faither, d'ye no mind Tam?--Tam Wilson?" And the next moment Tom--_her_ Tom--was at her side, and fondling her to his heart.

That was a happy night at Fairyknowe. Tom was in all his glory; the old man indulged in an extra gla.s.s of toddy while listening to his _yarns_; and Ellen _looked_ the joy she felt--there was no shade on her features now. Next Sunday, which was only two days afterwards, the gossips of the parish were quite astonished when they heard the names of Tom Wilson and Ellen Thompson cried three times in the kirk.

"Whatna Tam Wilson can that be, I wonder?" n.o.body knew. But next Sabbath-day all their "wonderings" were satisfactorily silenced, by witnessing the gay kirking party, with Tom and Ellen at their head--the handsomest couple, so they all said, they had seen this "mony a lang day." I was present at the wedding, which took place on the Friday preceding, and a happy scene it was. Tom has left ploughing the sea, to follow the plough on sh.o.r.e, and he and Ellen are settled in a small and comfortable farm with every prospect of happiness before them.

PERSEVERANCE;

OR, THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF RODERIC GRAY.

Courteous reader, thou must be aware that there is no virtue which conferreth greater benefits upon its possessor than the virtue of perseverance. It can scale precipices, overtop mountains, encompa.s.s seas. Perseverance is a mighty conqueror; it fighteth against odds, and neither turneth its back nor is dismayed. Its progress may be slow, but in the end it is sure. As a snail ascendeth a perpendicular wall, it may fall or be driven back to the ground, but it will renew the attempt. It suffereth longer than charity, and hence came the adage, that "they who look for a silk gown always get a sleeve o't." It has been said, "Great is truth, and it will prevail;" and in addition thereunto, I would say, "Great is perseverance, for it also will prevail." The motto of every man should be, "_nil desperandum_." Every one should remember that real honour and esteem do not seek a man on whom they are to alight--the man must seek them; he must win them, and then wear them.

Instead, however, of detaining the reader with dull and general remarks on perseverance, I shall at once lay before them a copy of the autobiography of Roderic Gray, whose history will ill.u.s.trate its effects in particulars:--

I was the son of poor but of honest parents. (With this stereotyped piece of history concerning poverty and honesty, Roderic Gray began his autobiography.) Yes, I repeat that my father and my mother were very poor, but they were sterlingly honest. They had a numerous family, and many privations to contend with; and the first thing I remember of my father was a constant, I may say a daily, expression of his, "Set a stout heart to a stey brae." Another great phrase of his, when any of us were like to be beaten by ought that we were attempting, was, "Try it again--never be beat--step by step brings the mountain low." My mother was of a disposition precisely similar to my father. Almost the first thing I remember of her is, what was her favourite expression, "Try it again, as your faither says--practice makes _perfiteness_."[7]

[Footnote 7: Perfection]

These expressions of my honoured parents were the rudiments of my education. They left an impression upon my heart and upon my brain, before I was sensible of what an impression was. There is often a great deal more conveyed through a single sentence, than we are apt to imagine. Our future destiny may be swayed by the hearing of one little word, and that word may be spoken in our hearing at a very early period of our lives. Many a father, when years began to sober down the buoyant tumult of his spirits, has wondered at and grieved over the disposition and actions of his son, marvelling whence they came; whereas the son received the feelings which gave birth to such actions, while he was but an infant, from the lips of his father, as he heard that father recount the deeds, the exploits, the feats of bravery of his young manhood. From the hour that a child begins to notice the objects around it, or to be sensible of kind or of harsh treatment, from that moment every one who takes it in their arms, every object around it, become its instructors.

I find I am digressing from my autobiography, but I shall go on with it by and by, and as I have mentioned the subject of education, I shall say a few more words upon that topic, and especially on the education of the young, which, though it detain the reader for a short s.p.a.ce from my history, will neither be uninstructive, nor without interest.

Some years ago, I met with a modern Job, who said he had read through the large edition of Johnson's Dictionary; and I do regret, with considerable sincerity, having neglected to ask the gentleman whether, in the course of his highly entertaining reading, he met with any word so murdered, butchered, abused, and misunderstood, as the poor polysyllable--education. Many wise people conceive it to signify many mult.i.tudes of words--of dead words and of living words, of words without symbols; or, in plain language, they say (or they act as if they said) that education means to make a man's head a portable lexicon of all languages. This is what they term the education cla.s.sical. Some very wise men go a step farther with the meaning of the term. They shake their heads in contempt at the mere word-men. They mingle more of utility with their idea of the signification. They maintain that education meaneth also certain figures, whereby something is learned concerning pounds and pence, and square inches and solid inches. Here the general idea of education terminates; and this is the education mercantile and mathematical. There are, however, a third cla.s.s of philosophically-wise men, who affirm that education means the macadamising, on a small scale, of blue stones and grey ones; in describing comets with tails, and planets without tails; in making the invisible gases give forth light in darkness, as the invisible mind lighteth mortality. This is the education scientific. Thus the artillery of all the three is directed against the head. The head is made a gentleman, a scholar, a philosopher, while the poor heart is suffered to remain in a state of untutored, uncared-for barbarity and ignorance. And in all this parade, concerning what education in reality imports, it is overlooked, that the heart from whence all evil proceeds--the heart where all good is received--is the soil where the first seeds of education ought to be sown, watered, watched over, pruned, and reared with tenderness. And it is not until the heart has become a st.u.r.dy savage, hardened in ignorance, that any attempts are made to curb it within the limits of moral obligation. A more insane idea cannot be conceived by a rational man, than supposing that education begins by learning to know that one letter is called A, a second B, and a third C.

Education begins with the first glance which the mother bestows upon her child in answer to its first smile. Before the infant has lisped its first word, the work of education has made progress. The mother is the first, the fondest, the most important and responsible teacher. It is hers to draw out the young soul, which dreams in the smiles and the laughing eyes of her infant; it is hers to subdue, and in gentleness to root up, the first germ of evil that springs into existence; it is hers to unfold, by a thousand ways and a thousand tendernesses, which a mother's heart can only conceive, and a mother's eye only can express, the first shadows of right and of wrong; it is hers to teach feelings of love, of gentleness, and grat.i.tude--to give a direction and a colouring to the embryo pa.s.sions which shall mark the future character and destiny of her yet sucking child. Nor is there an object upon earth more worthy the admiration, we had almost said the envy, of an angel, than a Christian mother gazing, in the depth of her affection, upon the babe of her bosom, watching its faculties expand like young flowers--bending them to the sun of truth, gently as the linnet bends the twig where it thrills its little song to cheer its partner. But, when the infant leaves the lap of its mother, and other duties divide her care, it is then necessary that a teacher, equally affectionate and equally efficient, be provided; for children seek, and will find, teachers of good or of evil in every scene, and in every playmate. It is now that the Infant School must mature the education which the mother has, or ought to have, begun. Some disciple of moth-eaten customs, whose ideas are like the flight of a bat, and whose imagination is hung round with cobwebs, may snarl out his mouthfuls of broken humanity, and inquire, what could be learned by infants of two or of five years of age, to compensate for blighting their ruddy cheeks like tender plants in a frost-wind, by mewing them up and crowding them together within the dismal walls of a noxious schoolroom, through the midst of which a male or a female tyrant continue their dreary tramp, tramping to and fro within the hated circle of their terror, and flourishing fear and trembling in their hand, in the shape of a birch, the bark of which has yielded to their work of punishment? I readily admit that, in such a place, and under such a teacher, nothing could be learned--nothing experienced--but an early foretaste of future misery. This is no picture of an infant school--this is no part of its discipline. Never would I confine the little innocents within the walls of a prison-house--never would I behold them trembling beneath the frown of a taskmaster. I would not curtail one of their infant joys, nor cut off one of their young pleasures. I would not mar their merry play, nor curb the glee that wantons in their little clubs. But I would mingle education with their joy and with their pleasures--health and lessons with their play--and affection and forgiveness in their little bands. Thus their joys or their pleasures, their play and their companions, become their teachers.

By an infant school I would not mean a room where a hundred children may be crowded together in an unhealthy atmosphere. The situation and comforts of the school are almost as important as the nature of the instruction, or the character and disposition of the teacher. The situation should be airy and healthy, and the room well ventilated, with a small play-ground attached. For the play-ground is almost as necessary as the school, and both are regarded by the pupils as places of loved amus.e.m.e.nt, where the presence of the teacher inspires no terror, no restraint, but where he mingles in their sports and directs them as an elder playmate, while they regard him as such, and in return love him as a parent. And while all appears unrestrained mirth on the little yard, or the little green; and exercise gives play to the lungs, vigour to the system, and health to the blood, and the small gymnasium rings with the joy of the happy beings, no incident, however trifling, is suffered to pa.s.s unimproved, to "lead them from nature up to nature's G.o.d," to eradicate evil propensities, and cherish a love of truth, justice, mercy, and mutual love. Their sports, their tempers, their little wrongs, or quarrels, all become monitors in the hands of the teacher, to render his infant charges the future good men, or the excellent women.

The schoolroom is only changing the scene of amus.e.m.e.nt, and tasks which I remember were to me the very essence of purgatory, pain, and punishment, are rendered to them an exquisite pastime. The pence table they carol merrily to the tune of "Nancy Dawson." With two or three sets of merry motions, they chant the formidable multiplication table, which affords them all the hilarity of chasing a b.u.t.terfly, or romping on the meadow. Nothing is given them in the shape of a task, but every new lesson is a new pleasure. They are not so much taught by words, as by bringing the thing signified under their observation. I should be sorry if the objects of infant schools should ever be so perverted as to attempt making them nurseries for infant prodigies. I care no more for precocity of talent than I do for a tree that has blossomed before its time, the fruit of which is sure not to be worth the gathering. The design of infant schools is not to make ignorant parents _vain_ of their children, but to make all parents _happy_ in their children. It is not so much the _quant.i.ty_ of what they learn that is to be regarded, as the _quality_ of what they learn. They will learn cheerful obedience to their parents, their instructors, and their future masters; they will learn the most important of all lessons to their after happiness, the government of their temper; they will learn conscientiousness in all that they do; they will learn sincerity; they will learn habits of order, of cleanliness, and of courtesy; they will learn method and dislike confusion; they will learn to bestow neatness, without vanity, on their persons; and order in all things. They will acquire a knowledge of geography, of the animal, the vegetable, and the mineral kingdoms, not as words but as things that exist, and of which they have an understanding. They will acquire much to amuse and delight the fireside of their parents--much to surround it with edification and instruction.

And instances have been, where they have there conveyed upon their lisping tongues conviction and conversion to a parent's heart; while their Maker from the lips of babes and of sucklings perfected praise.

They will be taught to feel that there is ever in the midst of them a G.o.d of love, of mercy, and of power, who is angry with the wicked every day. They will be taught to love the creatures He has framed, to know his Word, and revere its precepts--to love virtue for virtue's sake. It may be urged that much of the good produced by infant schools will be afterwards destroyed, by their mingling in other schools in riper years, with children whose pa.s.sions have been permitted to run wild, and especially where evil examples may exist on the part of the parents.

That these will have a prejudicial effect to a certain extent, is not to be denied. But for them there is also a preventive and a remedy. The infant school is the nursery of the Sabbath school, where all the good begun will be strengthened and confirmed. Great as the moral and religious change is which Sabbath schools have effected upon society, their effect would have been tenfold, had not the moral culture of the child been so unheeded before sending it to the school, and its heart so hardened by years and neglect, as to render an abiding impression impossible. But religious instruction, whether implanted in our minds by our father's fireside, in the infant school, or the Sabbath school, will never be forgotten. It will not depart from us. We may endeavour to shake it off, but it will struggle with us as Jacob with the angel. It will be a whisper in our souls for ever. We may grow up, and we may mingle with the world, and we may cast our Bibles far from us--and we may become wicked men and thoughtless women, but these whispers of eternal truth, though even thought to be forgotten by ourselves, will return and return again; and, when we wander in solitude, or lie sleepless on our pillow in the darkness of midnight, they will rush back upon our guilty minds, in texts, in verses, and in chapters, long, long forgotten.

But to return to my history. I have said that the first of my education was the sayings which I heard from the lips of my father and mother.

They gave an inclination to my spirit, as the hand bendeth the twig.

They became to me as monitors that were always present. I often think that I hear the voice of my honoured father saying unto me still, "Whatsoever ye take in hand, _persevere_ until ye accomplish it." That maxim became with me a principle, which has continued with me from childhood unto this day.

Before proceeding farther, it is necessary for me to say that my father was not only a poor man, but his occupation was one of the humblest which a peasant could occupy. He filled no higher situation than that of occasional barnman, and hedger and ditcher, upon a farm near Thornhill, in Dumfries-shire. Neither was he what some would call a strong-minded man, nor did he know much of what the world calls education; but, if he did not know what education was, he knew what the want of it was, and he was resolved that that was a knowledge which his children should never acquire. It was therefore his ambition to make them scholars to the extent of his means. But, when I state that his income did not exceed six shillings, you will agree with me that those means were not great.

But my father's maxim, _persevere_, carried him over every difficulty.

When my mother had said to him, as a quarter's wages became due--"Robin, I will never be able to stand thir bairns' schooling--sae mony o' them is a perfect ruination to me."

"Nonsense, Jenny," he would have said, in his own half-laughing, good-natured way; "the back is aye made fit for the burden. Just try anither quarter, though we have to be put to our shifts to make it out.

I'm no feared but that we will make it out some way or other. We have always done it yet, and what we have done, we can do again. Let us give them a' the schooling we can, poor things; and the day will come when they will thank us, or mair than thank us, for a' that we have wared upon them. O Jenny, woman! had I been a scholar, as I am not, instead o'

being the wife o' a labouring man the day, ye would have been my wife--but a leddy."

A thousand times since, it has been a matter of wonder to me how my parents, out of their n.i.g.g.ard income, provided food, clothing, and education for their family, which consisted of five sons and four daughters, all of whom could not only read, write, and cast accounts; but, though I say it who perhaps ought not to say it, his sons, in point of "_schooling_" in higher branches, were the equals, and perhaps more than the equals, of the richest farmer's sons in the neighbourhood. And never did a quarter-day arrive, on which any of the nine children of Robert and Janet Gray went before his teacher without his money in their hand, even as the brethren of Joseph, the patriarch, carried the money in their sacks' mouth. For it was not with my revered parents, as now-a-days it is with too many, who regard paying a schoolmaster his fees somewhat in the same light as paying a physician after his patient is dead, or a lawyer when the cause is lost.

Every Sat.u.r.day night my father, though no scholar himself, caused us to bring home our books and our slates, and in his homely way he examined us--or rather he examined _them_ (the books and the slates)--as to the proficiency we had made. Of figures he did know something: grammar, he said, was a new invention, and there, for a time, his examinations were at fault, and he knew not how to judge or to decide. But (I being the eldest) as I grew up, he transferred the examination of my younger brothers, as regarded grammatical proficiency, to me. And well do I remember, that every weekly examination closed with the admonition--"Now, bairns, _persevere_. Ye see how your mother and me have to fecht late and early to keep ye at the schule; and it is my greatest ambition to see ye a' scholars. Learning is a grand thing; it is a fortune equal to the best estate in the kingdom--ay, even to the Duke o' Buccleugh's; but oh, the want o' it is a great calamity, as nane can tell ye better than your faither. Therefore, bairns, _persevere_; always strive to be at the head o' your cla.s.s, and if I live to be an auld man, I shall see some o' ye leddies and gentlemen."

Thus the word _persevere_ was for ever rung in our ears; and I believe, before any of us knew its meaning, we one and all put it in practice.

And often, when the frost lay white upon the ground, before the sun got up, and even when the ice drew itself together like a piece of lace-work on the shallow pools, at the head of all the cla.s.ses in our school, which were just like stepping-stairs, a barefooted and barelegged laddie, but with hands and face as clean as the linen on his back, might have been seen as the dux of every cla.s.s: and all those barefeeted or barelegged laddies were the bairns of Robert Gray.

"Persevere as ye are doing, Roderic," my old teacher used to say, "and ye will live to be an ornament to your country yet." I doubt all the ornament I have been to my country is hardly of a higher kind than that of a stucco or a paste-board figure on a mantelpiece, and perhaps not so much. However, be that as it may, I have the consolation to think that I have not pa.s.sed through the world exactly as if I had been a cipher.

I know it is a difficult and a delicate thing for a man to write a sketch of his own life, without committing shipwreck on the shoals and quicksands of egotism; but I will endeavour to steer clear of this, and while it is certain that I will "set down nought in malice," I trust that I shall be able to show that I will "nothing extenuate."

My father's precept of _perseverance_ carried me through my schoolboy days gloriously, even as it had borne him through the expense of paying out of his scanty earnings for the education of nine children. I wanted three days of completing my thirteenth year when I left the school, but then I had begun to read Homer in Greek--I had read Horace in Latin, and I was acquainted with Euclid. My father was proud of me, my master was proud of me, for I had _persevered_. It was seldom that the son of a cottar, or the son of any one else, left the school at such an age so far advanced.

Many said that before I was twenty they would see me in a pulpit--but they were mistaken. My father's habitual word, _persevere_, had taken too deep root in my heart, until it produced a sort of mental perpetual motion, which ever urged me onward--onward! and I found that the limits of a pulpit would never confine or contain me. I felt like a thing of life and happiness, that rejoiced and shook its wings beneath the sunshine of freedom, and I longed to expand my wings, even though they should fall or break under me.

I have said that I left school three days before I had completed my thirteenth year, and on the day that I did so, I was to become tutor in the family of a Colonel Mortimer, of the Honourable the East India Company's service. I was to be at once the playmate and instructor of two children; the one five, the other seven years of age--both boys. But his family contained another child--Jessy Mortimer--a lovely, dark-eyed girl of fifteen. The sun of an eastern clime had early drawn forth her beauty into ripeness, and although but two years older than myself, she was as a woman, while I was not only a mere boy, but, if I might use the expression, something between what might be termed a boy and a child; and certainly at the very age when children are most disagreeable to persons of a riper age. Yet, young as I was, from the very day that I beheld her, my soul took up its habitation in her eyes. I was dumb in her presence, I opened not my mouth. I was as a whisper, a shadow, in the family--a piece of mechanism that performed the task designed for it. It was a presumptuous thing in the son of a humble barnman to fix his eyes and his heart upon the daughter of an East India colonel, and one two years older than himself; but the heart hath its vagaries, even as our actions have.

For the first two years that I was in the house of Colonel Mortimer, I may say that, save in my cla.s.s-room, my voice was not heard above my breath. But, as my voluntary dumbness became more and more oppressive, so also did my affection, my devotion, for Jessy become the more intense. The difference between our ages seemed even to have become more marked, and I felt it. Yet I began to think that her eyes looked upon me more tenderly; and the thought increased the devotion which for two years I had silently cherished. There seemed also a music, a spirit of gentleness and of kindness, in her voice, which first inspired me with hope.

Thus did five years pa.s.s on, and during that period I hardly ventured to lift up my eyes in her presence; though throughout that period I had said within my heart, Jessy Mortimer _shall be my wife_, and that was a bold thought for the son of a barnman to entertain towards the daughter of a wealthy nabob. But throughout my whole life I had endeavoured to put into practice my father's counsel concerning perseverance; and most of all was I determined to follow it in the subject which was deepest in my heart.

I remember the first time I ever spoke to Jessy. When I say the first time I spoke to her, I mean the first time that my soul spoke to her through my lips. For more than five years we had exchanged the common civilities of society with each other; but the language of the heart is ever a sealed volume, when the cold-fashioned ceremonies of society have to be observed.

But to proceed. I was now upwards of eighteen, and the children under my tuition were to be removed to a public school. It was no disgrace to me that they were to be so removed, for I knew it from the beginning of my engagement. Yet I felt it as disgrace--as more than disgrace--because that it would tear me from the side of Jessy, on whom my eyes lived and my mind dreamed. I had no wish to be a teacher, no ambition to become a minister; and her father had procured for me a situation as a clerk to a broker in London. But to me the thoughts of departure were terrible.

Everything within and around the colonel's establishment had become things that I loved. I loved them because Jessy loved them, because she saw them, touched them, was familiar with and in the midst of them. They had become a portion of my _home_. I was unhappy at the thought of leaving them; but, beyond every other cause, my mind was without comfort at the thought of leaving her--it was hopeless, desolate. It was like causing a memory by force to perish in my heart.

It was in the month of September; I was wandering amidst the wooded walks upon her father's grounds. The rainbowed bronze of autumn lay upon the trees, deepening as it lay. The sun hung over the western hills; and the lark, after its summer silence, carolled over the heads of the last reapers of the season, to cheer their toil. A few solitary swallows twittered together, as if crying, "Come--come!" to summon them to a gathering and departure. The wood-pigeon cooed in the plantations, and as the twilight deepened, the plaintiveness of its strain increased. As I have said, I was then wandering in the wooded walks upon Colonel Mortimer's grounds, and my thoughts were far too deep for words. While I so wandered in lonely melancholy, my attention was aroused by the sound of footsteps approaching. I looked up, and Jessy Mortimer stood before me. I was too bashful to advance--too proud, too attached towards her, to retire.

We stood as though an electric spark had stricken both. I trembled, and my eyes grew dim; but I saw the rose die upon her cheeks. I beheld her ready to fall upon the ground, and, half unconscious of what I did, I sprang forward, and my arm encircled her waist.

"Jessy!--Miss Mortimer!" I cried. "Pardon me--speak to me."

"Sir!" she exclaimed--"Roderic!" I approached her--I took her hand. We stood before each other in silence. She drew herself up--she fixed her eyes upon me. "Sir," she returned, "I will not pretend to misunderstand your meaning; but remember the difference that exists in our situations."

"I remember it, Miss Mortimer--I do. I will remember it, Jessy. There _is_ a difference in our situations."

I sprang from her--I thought I felt her hand detaining mine; and, as I rushed away, I heard her exclaiming, "Stay, Roderick! stay!" But wounded pride forbade me--it withheld me. I thought of my father's and of my mother's words--"Persevere! persevere!" And while I thought, I felt a something within, which whispered that I should one day speak to the daughter of Colonel Mortimer as her equal.