could never have been worse than it is at present. But now to the point.
Were it not for the language, which, if the boys were to pick it up,
might ruin their prospects in life,--were it not for that, I should very
much like to send them to a school there is in this place, which
everybody talks about--the High School, I think they call it. 'Tis said
to be the best school in the whole island; but the idea of one's children
speaking Scotch--broad Scotch! I must think the matter over."

And he did think the matter over; and the result of his deliberation was
a determination to send us to the school. Let me call thee up before my
mind's eye, High School, to which, every morning, the two English
brothers took their way from the proud old Castle through the lofty
streets of the Old Town. High School!--called so, I scarcely know why;
neither lofty in thyself, nor by position, being situated in a flat
bottom; oblong structure of tawny stone, with many windows fenced with
iron netting--with thy long hall below, and thy five chambers above, for
the reception of the five classes, into which the eight hundred urchins,
who styled thee instructress, were divided. Thy learned rector and his
four subordinate dominies; thy strange old porter of the tall form and
grizzled hair, hight Boee, and doubtless of Norse ancestry, as his name
declares; perhaps of the blood of Bui hin Digri, the hero of northern
song--the Jomsborg Viking who clove Thorsteinn Midlangr asunder in the
dread sea battle of Horunga Vog, and who, when the fight was lost and his
own two hands smitten off, seized two chests of gold with his bloody
stumps, and, springing with them into the sea, cried to the scanty relics
of his crew, "Overboard now, all Bui's lads!" Yes, I remember all about
thee, and how at eight of every morn we were all gathered together with
one accord in the long hall, from which, after the litanies had been read
(for so I will call them, being an Episcopalian), the five classes from
the five sets of benches trotted off in long files, one boy after the
other, up the five spiral staircases of stone, each class to its
destination; and well do I remember how we of the third sat hushed and
still, watched by the eye of the dux, until the door opened, and in
walked that model of a good Scotchman, the shrewd, intelligent, but
warmhearted and kind dominie, the respectable Carson.

And in this school I began to construe the Latin language, which I had
n