se
o' Solitary Sandy. I never could get Watty to scan a line or construe
a sentence richt in my days. He did not seem to understand the nature
o' words, or, at least, in so far as applied to sentiment, idea, or
fine writing. Figures were Watty's alphabet; and, from his earliest
years, pounds, shillings, and pence were the syllables by which he
joined them together. The abstruser points of mathematics were beyond
his intellect; but he seemed to have a liking for the _certainty_ of
the science, and he manifested a wish to master it. My housekeeper
that then was has informed me that, when a' the rest o' ye wad hae
been selling your copies as waste-paper, for _taffy_, or what some ca'
_treacle-candy_, Watty would only part wi' his to the paper purchaser
for money down; and when ony o' ye took a greenin for the sweet things
o' the shopkeeper, without a halfpenny to purchase one, Watty would
volunteer to lend ye the money until a certain day, upon condition
that ye would then pay him a penny for the loan o' his halfpenny. But
he exhibited a grand trait o' this disposition when he cam to learn
the rule o' _Compound Interest_. Indeed, I need not say he _learned_,
it, for he literally _devoured_ it. He wrought every question in
Dilworth's Rule within two days; and, when he had finished it (for he
seldom had his slate away from my face, and I was half tired wi'
saying to him, "That will do, sir"), he came up to my desk, and, says
he, wi' a face as earnest as a judge--

"May I go through this rule again, sir?"

"I think ye understand it, Watty," said I, rather significantly.

"But I would like to be perfect in it, sir," answered he.

"Then go through it again, Watty," said I, "and I have nae doubt but
ye will be _perfect_ in it very quickly."

I said this wi' a degree o' irony which I was not then, and which I am
not now, in the habit of exhibiting before my scholars; but, from what
I had observed and heard o' him, it betrayed to me a trait in human
nature that literally disgusted me. But I have no pleasure in dwelling
upon his history. Shortly after leaving the school, he was sent up to
London to an uncle; and, as his parents had the means o' setting him
up in the world, he was there to make choice o' a profession. After
looking about the great city for a time, it was the choice and
pleasure o' Cautious Watty to be bound as an apprentice to a
pawnbroker. He afterwards commenced business for himself, and every
day in his lif