CHAPTER TEN 1844-46 N these last pages there has been an unavoidable lapping over beyond the period of actual childhood, as some of the features I of life occurring first at a very early time, were not incidents of the moment, but were carried on into more advanced boyhood. Returning now to the time when the definite advance from infancy to boyhood occurs, that step is generally marked by the transition from petticoats to trousers, but memory fails me as to the exact time at which this occurred in my case. I suppose it was when I first went to school at Circus Place, near St. Stephen's Church. The school has long ago disappeared. It was then the day when such a thing as a playground for boys was not thought of. We had no schoolboy association together, when class hours were over, and during the short intervals of classes we had to be content to play at marbles or whip-top or spinning-top in the backyard of the house, or on the street. We also had a game called "papes"-a boy's corruption, I suppose, of "pips." It consisted in laying a row of cherrystones along between the first and second finger, and throwing them from a short distance into a small hole made at the bottom of the garden wall opposite the school. He who got the most of the number into the hole took those of him that failed. The stones were counted by "caddels," another corruption of "quadrille," which meant four "papes." It was a good game, and the cheapest prize sport in existence. I inquire at boys about it now, and they do not know what I am talking about. Cheapness in sport, as in everything else, is not the order of the day. There were not many stirring incidents at Circus Place, but there was one which I never can forget, as it was so marked an illustration of the want of sense that teachers sometimes show, which leads to their doing injustice without intending to be unjust. I was a poor hand at writing, as I am still, and on one occasion I had to write what was called a "specimen." When it was presented to the youthful teacher he tore it up, produced his tawse (the Scottish instrument of torture for boys) and administered six strokes, well laid on. This might have been right enough-I say nothing against it. But he immediately set me down to write another specimen, and when I had done so, with eyes full of tears and fingers smarting and trembling from the whacking, he took up the torn pieces of the first specimen and compared them with the second, declaring the latter to be the worse of the two. Surely that the second should be worse than the first was not surprising, being written by smarting fingers. Again he administered the same as before to my already wellbruised hand. One learns early in life not to expect to pass through it without meeting with injustice. Every parent should warn his children that they must not expect always to be treated BITTER AND SWEET justly, as every parent knows, probably from his own experience, that such a thing is not to be expected. The severest flogging I ever endured was for an offence of which I was absolutely innocent, and I barely escaped another, though threatened with the very worst if I offended again -the alleged offence being one of which I was not guilty. The longest period of family disgrace I everendured was also for a supposed offence which had not been committed. Perhaps all this was good for me. I do not know. It may have taught one to be very sure before dealing with one's own. The Edinburgh boy had for his favourite sweetmeats two particular delights, not known at that time elsewhere. Curiously enough they both took their name from the same place. It is an indication how, in the early part of the century, names connected with war came to be applied to ordinary things. They may take their place beside the name Wellington boot and the name Blucher boot. One of these sweetmeats was called "Gib," and the other was called "Rock"-the one the first syllable, and the other the last syllable of the name "Gibraltar Rock." Edinburgh Rock is a "goody" of a much later date. When I hear anyone speaking of the fort as "Gib," it recalls the "gib" of my childhood, not without misgivings that the warnings I got from my elders, that if I could see how it was made I would not suck at it so eagerly, and which were unwisely disregarded. |