school money is 3/-, a ferret 3d., and so on. His sister Polly's
expenses are entered in the same book and that young lady's outlay was
more formidable. Items for the milliner such as "making up a Bonnet.
3/6," (young ladies still wore bonnets) are frequent. Miss Polly spent
6/- on ear-rings. Once when she took a "Shaise" it cost her 2/-, while
"Chair Hire" is sometimes 1/6 and sometimes reduced to the modest
proportions of 9d. No doubt for her health's sake she bought for 1/- a
"Sacred Tincture" which, we may hope, did her good.

Thomas Nairne was an attractive boy. He lived with his father's executor
and friend, James Ker, an Edinburgh banker, a wise, prudent, far-seeing,
man. Mr. Ker was married to Colonel Nairne's niece and he received Tom
as his own child. The boy was the inseparable companion of Ker's son
Alick. Tom won praises on all sides. An Aunt wrote seriously that she
had feared he was too good to live; and she comforted Nairne's grief at
his son John's death by the thought of what Tom will be to him. He is "a
happy chearful pleased little fellow always quiet at home"--but also
"happy and at home wherever he goes." So thoughtful, she adds, is he
that, entirely on his own motion, he deems it proper to write to his
mother; one of these letters is before me--beautifully written in a
large but well-formed schoolboy hand. "A very promising sweet young
man," was the renewed judgment of his business-like guardian upon Tom
in 1803, when he was a boy of only sixteen. By that time, it was thought
that Tom had exhausted the advantages of the Edinburgh High School. The
Edinburgh accent of the day did not suit the taste of his fastidious
guardian, who hoped that in an English school a better manner of speech
might be acquired. Tom's cousin and companion, Alick Ker, a boy a few
years older, was going to school at Durham and thither also went Tom.
The lads "are the greatest friends in the world," wrote his watchful
aunt; "Alick does not know how to exist without Tom but Tom is more
independent of Alick, for he is not so shy." In an aunt's, perhaps
partial, view Tom was quicker and showed more application than Alick.
"Tom advances with great deliberation in his height," she writes, which
was very convenient, for, since Alick was older, Tom came in for Alick's
out-grown clothes and this saved expense.

When the boy's school days were drawing to an end his future course was
the topic of much discussion. Tom's father had wish