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My Schools and Schoolmasters of the History of My Education
My Schools and Schoolmasters of the History of My Education Author:Hugh Miller General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1857 Original Publisher: Thomas Constable and Co. Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com wher... more »e you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER III. " At Wsllace name what Scottish blood But boils up in a spring-tide flood! Oft have our fearless fathers strode By Wallace' side, Still pressing onward, red wat shod, Or glorious died." -- Burns. I First became thoroughly a Scot some time in my tenth year; and the consciousness of country has remained tolerably strong within me ev-er since. My uncle James had procured for me from a neighbour the loan of a common stall-edition of Blind Harry's "Wallace," as modernized by Hamilton; but after reading the first chapter, -- a piece of dull genealogy, broken into very rude rhyme, -- I tossed the volume aside as uninteresting ; and only resumed it at the request of my uncle, who urged that, simply for his amusement and gratification, I should read some three or four chapters more. Accordingly, the three or four chapters more I did read; -- I read " how Wallace killed young Selbie the Constable's son;" "how Wallace fished in Irvine Water;" and "how Wallace killed the Churl with his own staff in Ayr;" and then Uncle James told me, in the quiet way in which he used to make a joke tell, that the book seemed to be rather a rough sort of production, filled with accounts of quarrels and bloodshed, and that I might read no more of it unless I felt inclined. But I now did feel inclined very strongly, and read on with increasing astonishment and delight. I was intoxicated with the fiery narratives of the blind minstrel, -- with his fierce breathings of hot, intolerantpatriotism, and his stories of astonishing prowess; and, glorying in being a Scot, a...« less