during the years in which she was "finished" in Edinburgh, and never
saw a map then. She felt interested in geography when her children were
learning it. No boy in Mr. Murray's school was allowed to be idle;
every spare minute was given to arithmetic. In the parish school boys
of all classes were taught. Sir David Brewster's sons went to it; but
there were fewer girls, partly because no needlework was taught there,
and needlework was of supreme importance. Mr. Murray was session clerk,
for which he received 5 pounds a year. On Saturday afternoons he might do
land measuring, like Goldsmith's schoolmaster in "The Deserted
Village"--

Lands he could measure, terms and tides presage,
And even the rumour ran that he could gauge.

My mother felt that her children were receiving a much better education
than she had had. The education seemed to begin after she left school.
Her father united with six other tenant farmers in buying the third
edition of "The Encyclopedia Briannica," seven for the price of six.
Probably it was only in East Lothian that seven such purchasers could
be found, and my mother studied it well, as also the unabridged
Johnson's Dictionary in two volumes. She learned the Greek letters, so
that she could read the derivations, but went no further. She saw the
fallacy of Mr. Pitt's sinking fund when her father believed in it. To
borrow more than was needed so as to put aside part on compound
interest, would make the price of money rise. And why should not
private people adopt the same way of getting rid of debts? The father
said it would not do for them at all--it was only practicable for a
nation. The things I recollect of the life in the village of Melrose,
of 700 inhabitants, have been talked over with my mother. and many
embodied in a little MS. volume of reminiscences of her life. I hold