One of the trials of my boy's life at school in Dunfermline was
committing to memory two double verses of the Psalms which I had to
recite daily. My plan was not to look at the psalm until I had started
for school. It was not more than five or six minutes' slow walk, but I
could readily master the task in that time, and, as the psalm was the
first lesson, I was prepared and passed through the ordeal
successfully. Had I been asked to repeat the psalm thirty minutes
afterwards the attempt would, I fear, have ended in disastrous
failure.

The first penny I ever earned or ever received from any person beyond
the family circle was one from my school-teacher, Mr. Martin, for
repeating before the school Burns's poem, "Man was made to Mourn." In
writing this I am reminded that in later years, dining with Mr. John
Morley in London, the conversation turned upon the life of Wordsworth,
and Mr. Morley said he had been searching his Burns for the poem to
"Old Age," so much extolled by him, which he had not been able to find
under that title. I had the pleasure of repeating part of it to him.
He promptly handed me a second penny. Ah, great as Morley is, he
wasn't my school-teacher, Mr. Martin--the first "great" man I ever
knew. Truly great was he to me. But a hero surely is "Honest John"
Morley.

In religious matters we were not much hampered. While other boys and
girls at school were compelled to learn the Shorter Catechism, Dod and
I, by some arrangement the details of which I never clearly
understood, were absolved. All of our family connections, Morrisons
and Lauders, were advanced in their theological as in their political
views, and had objections to the catechism, I have no doubt. We had