the seed was sown then which was to fructify throughout my whole
remaining life, and from the day when I first felt the fascination of
that humble printer's workshop, I never ceased to regard myself as in a
special degree a child of the printing-press. How delightful were the
hours which I and David, the journeyman aforesaid, spent together when
business was slack--and it was often slack! Then it was that together we
would compose the most wonderful announcements of the great enterprises
to which I was to commit myself in after life. Now it was the prospectus
of a "genteel academy" of which I was to be the principal, and again it
was the announcement of the opening of a vast emporium for the sale of
goods of every description under my direction, that we thus composed and
printed. These advertisements were invariably printed on gilt-edged paper
in the bluest of ink, and, when I subsequently returned home, excited
prodigious envy in my elder brother, who had never been privileged to
"see himself in print."

My stay at St. Andrews ended at last in a somewhat melancholy fashion. As
the place seemed to agree with me, it was settled that I should remain
for a year at least; and in order that the time might not be wasted I was
sent to school, the school being the well-known Madras College. Here both
boys and girls were taught together. Of the present state of that famous
institution I know nothing, nor do I wish to utter a word of
disparagement of those who were responsible for its management fifty
years ago; but to me, a timid boy who, in spite of his Northumbrian burr,
was turned to ridicule as a Cockney by the Fifeshire lads and lasses, it
wore the aspect of a veritable place of torment. That classic instrument
of discipline, the tawse, was in use at every hour of the day, girls as
well as boys receiving barbarous punishment under the eyes of their
class-mates. Perhaps the cruelty was not so great as it seemed to me, but
at all events it was enough, so far as I was concerned. My dread of the