ing Muirtown clerk went up to London
without a single introduction and obtained a situation in the great firm
of Brancker, Copleston, Goldbeater & Co., on the strength of a letter
and sheet of figures he sent to old Fyler, the manager, whose reason was
giving way under the scrawling of the junior clerks. Bulldog considered
that his pupils' handwriting steadily deteriorated from the day of their
departure. When they came to see him at school from Glasgow, London, and
beyond the sea, as they all did, on their visits to Muirtown, besides
giving them an affectionate welcome, which began at the door and ended
at the desk, he never failed to produce their letters and point out the
decadence in careful detail, while the school rejoiced greatly.

Any lad who showed some aptitude, or whose father insisted on the higher
education, was allured into geometry and raised to the dignity of the
blackboard, where he did his work in face of the school with fear and
trembling. This was public life, and carried extremes of honour and
disgrace. When Willie Pirie appeared at the board--who is now a
Cambridge don of such awful learning that his juniors, themselves
distinguished persons, can only imagine where he is in pure
mathematics--the school, by tacit permission, suspended operations to
see the performance. As Willie progressed, throwing in an angle here and
a circle there, and utilising half the alphabet for signs, while he
maintained the reasoning from point to point in his high, shrill voice,
Bulldog stood a pace aside, a pointer in one hand and in the other a
cloth with which at a time he would wipe his forehead till it was white
with chalk, and his visage was glorious to behold. When the end came,
Bulldog would seize the word out of Pirie's mouth and shout, "Q. E. D.,
Q ... E ... D. Splendid. Did ye follow that, laddies?" taking snuff
profusely, with the cloth under one arm and the pointer under the other.
"William Pirie, ye'll be a wrangler if ye hae grace o' continuance.
Splendid!"

It was otherwise when Jock Howieson tried to indicate the nature of an
isosceles triangle and confused it with a square, supporting his
artistic efforts with remarks which reduced all the axioms of Euclid to
one general ruin. For a while the master explained and corrected, then
he took refuge in an ominous silence, after which, at each new
development, he played on Jock with the pointer, till Jock, seeing him
make for the cane, modestly withdrew, but