William Garden Blaikie

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III THE GRAMMAR SCHOOL, 1828-1833 I Was fortunate in teachers as in parents. At the age of eight and a half my formal English education ceased (almost before it had begun), and I was sent to the Grammar School. There we got Latin, and Latin only, morning, noon, and night. The reason why I was sent...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III THE GRAMMAR SCHOOL, 1828-1833 I Was fortunate in teachers as in parents. At the age of eight and a half my formal English education ceased (almost before it had begun), and I was sent to the Grammar School. There we got Latin, and Latin only, morning, noon, and night. The reason why I was sent so early was, that in the winter of 1828, Mr. Dun, by far the most capable and popular of the three under-masters, was starting a first class, which he would carry on for three years, until we should pass into the department of the Rector. This was a happy arrangement for me in one sense, though I have ever regretted in more mature years that I began so young. Compared with James Melvin, our renowned and redoubtable rector, John Dun seemed a man of but ordinary calibre; but he was an excellent teacher, of a kindly temper that won the respect and love of his pupils. The sarcastic temperament of the Aber- donians was often shown in the nicknames which the boys gave to their schoolmasters, to say nothing of what they gave to each other; but while even the Rector was known as ' Grim ' or ' Grim Pluto, ' and one of the masters was invariably ' Chuckle, ' there was no such sobriquet for our master, who was simply ' Dunnie.' It was a pleasure to stand well with him, and especially to be found in the first (faction.' The schoolroom was arranged in parallel rows of seats, like the pews in a church, four boys in each row, with a passage between; and the seats, for whatcause I know not, were called ' factions.' It was highly honourable to be in the first faction, creditable to be in the second, respectable in the third, but deplorable to be in the fourth or lowest. We had a class of seventy or eighty, of whom three or four were always contending for the highest place. Certainly this riva..