same way. In after life I, of course, used
logarithms for the higher branches of science.

I had to take part in the household affairs, and to make and mend my
own clothes. I rose early, played on the piano, and painted during the
time I could spare in the daylight hours, but I sat up very late reading
Euclid. The servants, however, told my mother "It was no wonder the
stock of candles was soon exhausted, for Miss Mary sat up reading till a
very late hour;" whereupon an order was given to take away my candle as
soon as I was in bed. I had, however, already gone through the first six
books of Euclid, and now I was thrown on my memory, which I exercised by
beginning at the first book, and demonstrating in my mind a certain
number of problems every night, till I could nearly go through the
whole. My father came home for a short time, and, somehow or other,
finding out what I was about, said to my mother, "Peg, we must put a
stop to this, or we shall have Mary in a strait jacket one of these
days. There was X., who went raving mad about the longitude!"

* * * * *

In our younger days my brother Sam and I kept various festivals: we
burnt nuts, ducked for apples, and observed many other of the ceremonies
of Halloween, so well described by Burns, and we always sat up to hail
the new year on New Year's Eve. When in Edinburgh we sometimes disguised
ourselves as "guisarts," and went about with a basket full of Christmas
cakes called buns and shortbread, and a flagon of "het-pint" or posset,
to wish our friends a "Happy New Year." At Christmas time a set of men,
called the Christmas Wakes, walked slowly through the streets during the
midnight hours, playing our sweet Scotch airs on flageolets. I remember
the sound from a distance fell gently on my sleeping ear, swelled
softly, and died away in distance again, a passing breeze of sweet
sound. It was very pleasing; some thought it too sad.

My grandfather was intimate with the Boswells of Balmuto, a bleak place
a few miles to the north of Burntisland. Lord Balmuto, a Scotch judge,
who was then proprietor, had been a dancing companion of my mother's,
and had a son and two daughters, the eldest a nice girl of my age, with
whom I was intimate, so I gladly accepted an invitation to visit them at
Balmuto. Lord Balmuto was a large coarse-looking man, with black hair
and beetling eyebrows. Though not vulgar, he was passionate, and had a
boisterous manner. My moth