them in order that I might escape the ordeal of a public examination.
They were desperate ruffians, and the police declared their belief that
if they had known I was alone in the house they would have murdered me.

I now come to my schooldays in the distant years 1852-4. My father, as I
have already said, was a minister of religion for fifty years at
Newcastle. He was one of the gentlest and noblest of men, one whom I have
never ceased to revere as the very pattern and exemplar of a Christian
gentleman. But those who follow such a calling cannot expect to gain
riches as their reward, and my father was a poor man. Despite his
poverty, he was resolved that his sons should have the best education
that he could procure for them. That meant that they must be sent to the
best school in the town--Percy Street Academy. So when my elder brother
in 1848 was of school age, he took him to Mr., not then Dr., Bruce, to
enter him as a pupil. I have no doubt that he went with some trepidation,
knowing full well that the school fees would be a heavy tax upon his
small income. I was sitting with my mother in the drawing-room of
Summerhill Terrace when my father returned, and I saw that there was an
unwonted brightness on his gentle face. He told my mother how Mr. Bruce,
after examining my brother, had pronounced him to be fully qualified to
enter the school; and then my father asked about the fees. The answer he
received was, "My dear Mr. Reid, I never take a fee from a minister of
religion." And so it came to pass that not only my brother James but
myself and my two younger brothers were educated at Percy Street without
any fee being paid on our behalf. No one will wonder that I cherish Dr.
Bruce's memory with unstinted gratitude and reverence.

Schooldays, despite the popular theory, are, as a matter of fact,
generally as uninteresting to the schoolboy as their story is to the
public, and I shall not detain the reader with much about this period of