lived in the bosom of a mountain, whose rugged breast he cultivated
with a strength proportioned to the difficulty of subduing it. He was
a powerful young fellow, quiet and inoffensive in his manners, and
possessed of great natural talents. It was upon a Monday morning, in the
month of June, that the school-room door opened a foot and a half wider
than usual, and a huge, colossal figure stalked in, with a kind of
bashful laugh upon his countenance, as if conscious of the disproportion
betwixt his immense size and that of the other schoolboys. His figure,
without a syllable of exaggeration, was precisely such as I am about to
describe. His height six feet, his shoulders of an enormous breadth,
his head red as fire; his body-coat made after the manner of his
grandfather's--the skirts of it being near his heels--and the buttons
behind little less than eighteen inches asunder. The pockets were cut
so low, that when he stretched his arm to its full length, his fingers
could not get further than the flaps; the breast of it was about nine
inches longer than was necessary, so that when he buttoned it, he
appeared all body. He wore no cravat, nor was his shirt-collar either
pinned or buttoned, but lay open as if to disclose an immense neck and
chest scorched by the sun into a rich and healthy scarlet. His chin was
covered with a sole of red-dry bristles, that appeared to have been
clipped about a fortnight before; and as he wore neither shoe
nor stocking, he exhibited a pair of legs to which Rob Roy's were
drumsticks. They gave proof of powerful strength, and the thick fell of
bristly hair with which they were covered argued an amazing hardihood of
constitution and tremendous physical energy.

"Sure, Masther, I'm comin' to school to you!" were the first words he
uttered.

Now there ran beneath the master's solemnity of manner a broad but