oyers doubled my
salary. I am sensible, however, that these are but small achievements.
In looking back upon my youth, I see, methinks, a wild fruit tree, rich
in leaf and blossom; and it is mortifying enough to mark how very few of
the blossoms have set, and how diminutive and imperfectly formed the
fruit is into which even the productive few have been developed. A right
use of the opportunities of instruction afforded me in early youth would
have made me a scholar ere my twenty-fifth year, and have saved to me at
least ten of the best years of life--years which were spent in obscure
and humble occupations. But while my story must serve to show the evils
which result from truant carelessness in boyhood, and that what was
sport to the young lad may assume the form of serious misfortune to the
man, it may also serve to show, that much may be done by after diligence
to retrieve an early error of this kind--that life itself is a school,
and Nature always a fresh study--and that the man who keeps his eyes and
his mind open will always find fitting, though, it may be, hard
schoolmasters, to speed him on in his lifelong education.

FOOTNOTES:

[17] Thomas Hog of Kiltearn. See "Scots Worthies" or the
cheap-publication volumes of the Free Church for 1846.

[18] Peter Clark and Michael Tod were the only individuals who, in a
population of three thousand souls, attached their signatures to the
_call_ of the obnoxious presentee, Mr. Young, in the famous Auchterarder
case.

[19] The following is the passage which was honoured on this occasion by
Chalmers, and which told, in his hands, with all the effect of the most
powerful acting:--"Saunders Macivor, the mate of the 'Elizabeth,' was a
grave and somewhat hard-favoured man, powerful in bone and muscle, even
after he had considerably turned his sixtieth year, and much respected
for his inflexible integrity and the depth of his religious feelings.
Both the mate and his devout wife were especial favourites with Mr.
Porteous of Kilmuir--a minister of the same class as the Pedens,
Renwicks, and Cargils of a former age; and on one occasion when the
sacrament was dispensed in his parish, and Saunders was absent on one of
his Continental voyages, Mrs. Macivor was an inmate of the manse. A
tremendous storm burst out in the night-time, and the poor woman lay
awake, listening in utter terror to the fearful roarings of the wind, as
it howled in the chimneys, and shook the casements and the