MY SCOTCH SCHOOL.

New Zealander, Volume XVII, Issue 1637, 25 December 1861, Page 5

MY SCOTCH SCHOOL.

The following extract which we give entire from the LonihtU Magazine for August, is one which will vividly bring before many of our Scotch citizens and fellow-settlers the reminiscences of their own school days. We have not enjoyed so hearty a laugh for some time as we did on reading this humorous and amusing, yet we believe perfectly faithful, description of a Scotch school, the doinince, the taws, the discipline and devilment of the scholars.

I have read a good deal ol' lute, in this magazine and elsewhere, about English public schools, their advantages and disadvantages, their merits and their shortcomings. Have the public any ears to hear something about the public schools of Scotland? Professor John Stuart Blackic has written often and with great force about the Scottish universities, showing that they exhibit the very defects which “Paterfamilias” has pointed out as existing in the public schools of England, with some others to hoot. I am not aware that any one has treated in the same way of the Scottish public schools. lam desirous to supply this defect for two, as I think, good reasons. First, because I myself received the rudiments of my education at one of those Scottish schools, and therefore know something of the subject; and, secondly, because there is a great deal of misapprehension in England with respect to Scotch schools and Scotch education generally. The popular idea here seems to he that Scotland, as regards education, is a sort of Torn Tiddler’s ground, a place where the people, both high and low, roll and wallow in education —a land were the rivers run with fertilising lore; where all the pines are trees of knowledge; where grammar is raked out of the ditches; and where even Greek roots arc to be had on the barren hill-sides for the trouble of digging. If this he true, Scotland stands not where it did when 1 went to school.

Let me premise that I am not going to enter into a disquisition on the subject, to analyze the plan of Scottish education, or to be didactic in any way whatever. 1 am simply about to give a sketch of my Scotch school—the school I went to to be prepared for the university. There were many penny postage stamps when 1 went to my Scotch school; the Reform Bill had been passed eight years previously; daguerrotypes and the electric telegraph were coming in. So it was but the other day. My school was the parochial, or parish school, the school of all Scotch boys who dwell in the country, whether high or low, gentle or simple. Here in England the word “ parish” is associated with all kinds of indignity, with the workhouse, the lock-up, the pound, the pauper’s allowance. It may, therefore, seem to the English reader, ignorant of Scottish matters, when I say I went to the parish school, that I wore a muffin cap and premature knee breaches (if the English mind can associate Scotland with these nether integuments in any shape), and was educated at the public expense. Let me dissipate this popular error.

The j>;irochial school in Scotland claims equal dignity with the parish kirk. It is the chief educational establishment —the public school in fact —of the district, and is part of the national system for spreading education and enlightenment among the people of Scotland. The Kirk in Scotland, that is to say, the Established Kirk, is supported by a levy upon the occupiers of the land. The tax, however, is an indirect one, and therefore does not provoke the discontent caused by tithes and church-rates in England. The heritors, that is to say, the land owners, pay the amount (on a scale in proportion to the price of grain) and repay themselves out of the rents of their tenants. This payment is not set down as a separate item in the rent-charge, and so the tennant pays his tithes and rales as he pays the tax upon his tea and tobacco. He is bled without knowing it. The parish school shares in this revenue with the parish kirk, but to a limited extent. Turning to the statistical account of my parish—written by the hand which directed the earliest calligrapnieal exercises of the one which now pens this —I find that the said parish is six miles long by live miles broad, and contains—or did contain then—a population of IG6I souls. Those English persons w r ho indulged in extravagant notions of the abundance of educational provision in the North may be a little surprised to learn that lor this -widelyscattered population there were only tw r o schools, each capable of accommodating no more than sixty or seventy scholars. The endowments of these educational establishments were by no means magnificent. The allowance to the master of the parochial school (who was required to be a college man of considerable classical attainments) was £34 4s. 4d. per annum, with a dwelling-house and garden, and fees of the scholars.* The fees ranged from 10s. to £ 1 per annum—ten shillings for reading, writing, and arithmetic, and an extra ten for the classics. The master of the other school —an auxiliary seminary established by the General Assembly—received £25 per annum and a cow’s keep, with the fees, averaging about ten shillings per annum for each scholar. It was not required that the master of this establishment should be a high classic, or indeed a classic at all. The appointment was vested in the minister, who was well content to select the candidate whose letter, soliciting the appointment, exhibited the fewest errors in orthography, perfection in that branch of grammar he never looked for and never got —for how could you expect irreproachable orthography for £25 a year and a cow’s keep? The worthy man—the minister—made great exertions to establish and carry on this school; but it was always a great source of trouble to him. College men, of course, disdained to accept so trifling a salary, or to undertake so undignified a duty as the instruction of poor cottars’ children in the alphabet. The minister was, therefore, obliged to accept the services of any half-educated aspirant for the honours of a dominie, who could bring testimony to his respectability, and write a tolerable letter. Most of the teachers—for there were frequent changes—were Highlanders, who were more conversant with Gaelic than with English, and who had learned the latter language as a foreign tongue. They all spoke with a fearful Highland twang, all were married, all had slatternly wives, and unreasonably large families. The cow that was kept at the public expense for the sustenance (lacteally) of the General Assembly’s schoolmaster had a hard time of it. Provender was scarce, and the demand for milk excessive; and the schoolmaster’s cow generally died of exhaustion, alter a year or two of self-sacrifice. , I remember once going with the minister to pay a visit to the Assembly’s institute in these parts. When we arrived the academic grove was deserted, and we were informed that the “ squeelraaister and the loons were oot on the peat moss.” There we found them, the dominie putting his pupils through a very novel kind of military exercise. He had collected his army on his own division of the moss, where bis peats lay in stacks, ready to be carted home, when he could afford to pay for the cartage. We arrived on the scene just as the review began. “Now, poys,” said the dominie, taking up a peat in each hand, “ this is a sword and this is a cun” —the Highland pronunciation of guu “ shoulder arms, poys.” Hero the “ poys” took a peat in each hand and shouldered them. “ March poys,” /■

• In an abstract of a bill for bettering the condition of the schoolmasters of Scotland, passed at the beginning of the century, it is laid down that the “ amount of salary to each parochial

said the doraenic, flourishing his peat marched the boys with their peats until, reached the schoolhouse, when the dominie made Them defile into a shed and ground arms; that is to say, lay down their peats in a heap convenient for the domestic use. This was what the dominie called his gymnastic exercises, which, he boasted, combined amusement and exercise with instruction; but a suspicion arising that these gymnastics were nothing more nor less than a Highland device for carrying home the dominie’s fuel on an economical principle, an order was issued from head-quarters that such military instruction should only take place in play-hours, and should not be included in the regular curriculum of study. But lam wandering away from my own school, nestling five miles off among the trees under the shadow ot the old kirk. It is a plain one-storey building divided into two parts; the one, consisting of three rooms and a kitchen, forming the home of the schoolmaster, and the other the schoolroom, —a tolerably large and airy apartment, with roughly plastered walls, and furnished with deal desks and forms of the universal school fashion. Ido not remember that there were at any time, more than sixty scholars. They were gathered together from all parts of the parish. Some of them came from a distance of four or five miles, and brought their dinners with them, the provision invariable consisting of a little tin can of milk and a bag of oat cakes. It was a rule that each scholar should contribute a load or two of peats every quarter for the school fire; but some of them choose to bring a peat with them every morning. These scholars made their morning’s journey to school rather heavily loaded, having to carry, besides their satchel, the tin. can of milk, the white calico bag of oat-cake, and the peat. We were of all ages, sexes, and conditions in this school. There was the son of the laird, the heir to an ancient baronetcy. He wore corduroys like the rest of us, and had five rows of broad-headed nails in his shoes. There were several sons of the minister, all destined for one or other ot the learned professions; there were the sons of gentleman farmers and the sons of poor cottars, their dependents; and with these, on terras of the broadest academic equality, mingled the grandson of the parish sexton and bell-ringer, the son of a widow occasionally receiving parochial relief, and the sons and daughters of carpenters, blacksmiths, and farm servants, including the female descendant of old Lizzy, pauper and egg vendor, who lit the school tire and swept the school floor in discharge of young Lizzy’s fees. Ko distinction of rank was preserved in any way whatever. The laird’s son and the grave-digger’s son stood up in the same class side by side, and I remember that the expectant baron was often “taken down” by the heir of the mortuary mattock. In the reading classes the boys and girls were all mingled together, and I have often seen a big, hulking follow of eighteen —some ambitious cotter's son who had taken to education late—standing next to a little girl in short petticoates and heel-strapped shoes. There was little jealousy on the score of religious belief in the parish. There were several Roman Catholic boys amongst us, and they joined in all our exercises, excepting the reading of the Bible and the saying of the Shorter Catechism, At these times the Roman Catholic boys sat in their scats and amused themselves; and not unfrequcntly, when memory failed with regard to Justification, Sanctification, and Adoption, we Protestants, smarting under the consequences, were tempted to wish from the bottom of our hearts that we had been brought up Papists. There was one feature of our school which appears very startling to me now, but which was never regarded as extraordinary by any of us at the time. It was this. Illegitimate mingled with the legitimate offspring of the same parents. Our parish was rather celebrated for irregularity in the matter of births, owing entirely to a local proneness to irregularity in the matter of marriage. This was not confined to the lower classes. Gentlemen farmers, who moved in the minister’s own circle, occasionally appeared before the Session to he admonished, and this sometimes led to the scandalous anomaly of a gentleman farmer dining at the manse one week and sitting on the stool of repentance the next. As there was only one school in the neighbourhood, and as it was considered imperative that every child, no matter what the circumstances of its birtli or position, should be educated, it constantly happened that there were several duplicates of families at the parochial school. In several instances that I well remember, the illegitimate scion lived iu perfect harmony with the legitimate in the bosom of the same family, and not unfrcqucntly the illegitimate member was regarded as the flower of the flock. I can call up before me now two Marys and two Peters. The two Marj-s lived under the same roof as sisters, and I never heard a word of reproach cast at the elder Mary, albeit she was the prettiest, cleverest, and illegitimate. It was different with the two Peters. Peter the First lived with his mother, Hagar, in the desert, an outcast from the paternal roof. But on the common ground of the parochial school, he sat on the same form, stood up in the same class, and shared equally in the Justification and Adoption of the Shorter Catechism with Peter the true-born, Peter the Base often enjoyed the satisfaction of giving Peter the true a “good licking but these quarrels never originated in resentment, arising out of their invidious relationship. So, you see, we were a strange, heterogeneous assemblage at this Scotch school.

A stranger aspect still was occasionally presented when two or three grown men and women took their places among ns. I remember Betty, the laird’s nurse, coming for a quarter to improve her handwriting ; and, nearly at the same time, the grown-up son of a neighbouring farmer, who had an ambition to become acquainted with mensuration and surveying. Betty had scarcely got to “ round hand,” before the farmer’s son, who was accustomed to pursue his studies on the opposite side of the desk, fell in love with her, and the upshot of it was that the farmer’s son and Betty threw learning to the winds, and went and got married before the quarter was out! When Betty was squaring her elbows out at the large text, the laird’s son was wont to take great delight in walking past and jogging her arm. in revenge for the ruthless way in which Betty used to clean out his ears with a piece of rough flannel on washing nights. An almost universal circumstance tends to make every Scottish parochial schoolmaster discontented with Ids position and impatient of his duties. The parish school is the stepping stone to the kirk, and each schoolmaster when lie is installed at the dominie’s desk, begins to long for the day when he will “ wag his head in the poopit.” The school-house is the hard shell of the chrysalis ; the manse, the flowery elysium of the full-fledged butterfly. When I went to school, our schoolmaster was in full cry after a kirk and a cure of souls. He spent a good deal of his time in reading the newspapers, and, as it appeared to me, in looking out (or the demise of neighbouring ministers. Every morning after prayers he read the newspapers for about an hour, during which time we, the pupils, sat and learned our lessons, or more often amused ourselves, as quietly as we could. When any unusual disturbance took place, the master threw the “ tag,” a piece of a gig trace burnt at the end to make it hard, at the offender. The pupil hit by it, no matter whether he was the real culprit or not, was expected to carry the instrument of punishment to the master and to accept flagellation, commonly on the hands, but not unffequcntly (when the prospect of a kirk looked hazy and dim) upon a part of the body which required preliminary untrussing of points to be got at. It lell to the lot of Lizzy, the sweeper’s granddaughter, most frequently to have to take up the “ tag.” Lizzy, it is true, was a very “ limb” in point of trouble ; but she had always more than her fair share of the gig trace. The way in which our schoolmaster lilted his hand against the female sex would have wholly disqualified him, in a nautical drama, from claiming the name of a British tar. The English reader may think that it equally disqualified him for the position of a British schoolmaster ; but I do not remember that anyone was shocked by these proceedings at the time. If a parent complained, it was not on the score of the indignity, but because the “ tag ’’ left its marks.

The course of instruction pursued at our school included reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, and the classics. In the general branches all sorts, and sexes, stood up together in the same classes, according to their relative state of advancement. The Greek and Latin classes only were select, they being composed of some hall-dozen boys of superior station , destined to go to college when they had mastered Latin enough to enable them to spell through Caesar and Virgil. _ With these the master took considerable pains for his own credit’s sake; for it would have been an eternal disgrace to him had his pupils been rejected on their first easy examination at Aberdeen, in the other branches the method pursued was one entirely of routine. Nothing was explained in a rational or intelligible way. The only reading books in the school were the Bible and M’Cullock’s first, second, and third “ Courses oi Heading,’’ three progressive volumns of badly selected extracts from various authors ; and at these we hammered away day after day, and over and over again, from the moment we entered the school until the moment we left it. There was not a single History in the school, not even a History of England in its most modest form of abridgment. As for myself, my early knowledge of English history was entirely derived from a sheet of coloured portraits of the English kings pasted up on the wall of my box-bed at home. My knowledge of the dates of their reigns, and the order of their succession, is even now vividly associated with that coloured sheet. Geography was taught froma book. We learned boundaries and the names of

ants wo learned nothing beyond that such and such a people “ were a hardy race, who devoted themselves to agriculture,” and the like. Arithmetic was taught in the same way. When we had, by an entirely mechanical and illogical process, committed to memory the multiplication table, we were given over to sombody’s “ Arithmetic,” to puzzle over rules and make our answers to the questions tally, by any means whatever, with those in the book. I remember, with regard to the rule of three, that we used to try one position after another, until we worked out the right answer. The dominie never condescended to explain the simple logic of the process. The result is, as regards myself, that I am to this day the greatest dunce at figures in the world. I believe I have been detected refusing to purchase oranges at two for three-halfpence, but readily agreeing to take five for sixpence, with the idea that it was a better bargain. At the time of which I speak it was a rule of faith with all Scotch schoolmasters that flagellation was tho primary and most important agent in the work of education. “ Spare the rod, and you spoil the child,” should have been written over the door of every parochial school. Every boy who entered the portals of my Scotch school with a consciousness of being imperfect in any lesson, left all hope of immunity from the tag behind him. The slightest mistake in spelling, or in saying the Shorter Catechism—that hated Shorter Catechism ! —was punished by one or more strokes of the tag on the extended hand. I have seen the order go down a whole class, “ Hold out your hand, sir.” And crack, crack, crack went the tag on our unflinching palms. We knew if wc flinched we should get a double dose, and perhaps on another and more sensitive part of cur bodies. I think I may safely say that a day never passed without a flogging. Two or three times a week the “ tag ” was the occasion of a regular scene. This was when some spirited or big boy refused to hold out his hand or untruss. I remember one notable occasion when the master attempted to inflict the “ extreme punishment ” on a big ploughman of eighteen or nineteen. There was a regular fight between them; and several times master and pupil went down together on the floor, rolling and struggling with all the desperation of men engaged in a mortal combat. Both panics called upon the pupils to come to their assistance; but we, small boys, were too much alarmed to side with either, albeit our sympathies were decidedly with tho ploughman. The result of this conflict was highly agreeable to us all. The dominie was laid up for a week with bruised legs, and during that time there was “ no school.” The terror inspired by the tag caused the boys to frequently play the truant; in the vernacular this was called “ ftigieing.” Scarcely a day passed that some boy did not “ fugie,” or fly the school. There was one boy who was particularly distinguished for this art. lie had been punished for it over and over again, and beaten at all points until he was black and blue, but still he would “ fugie.” He would come away from home in the morning with his satchel and dinner ; but, instead of going to school, would betake himself to tho forest, and spend the day in birds’ nesting, or in devouring “ blaeberries ” When his retreat was discovered, the master started one morning in pursuit of him, followed by all the scholars in a pack. We had a regular hunt, and greatly we enjoyed the sport, not caring so much for the fate of the fugitive as for the holiday, and the exemption for a few hours from lessons and the tag. Sandy, for that was the fugitive’s name, was unearthed like a fox, and hunted like one, all through the wood, and over the barn, and up the hill side to a clump of tall fur-trees, where, finding the dominie close upon him, with the tag vcngefully waved aloft, Sandy clambered up the smooth stem of a tall larch-tree, and perched himself triumphantly among its topmast brar. - chcs. The dominie, who was not deficient in pluck when upholding the prerogative of the tag, immediately made the attempt to follow him ; but finding the branches rather too slight to bear his weight, he was glad to slide down again, after having successfully climbed the stem. Having in vain commanded Sandy to come down, the dominie held a council of war with himself for a few minutes, and suddenly resolved upon his strategy. One of the boys was despatched to a neighbouring farm house for an axe. When it was brought, the dominie set to work at the root of the tree, and, when he had given it two or three strokes, called out once more to Sandy—“ Will you come down, sir ?” Sandy looked cautiously over from his nest among the branches to see what probability there was of the dominie’s being able to fell the tree, and, apparently coming to the conclusion that he couldn’t do it, contemptuously answered—“ Na, I winna come doon.” Once more the dominie laid the axe at tho root of Sandy’s citadel, and though he made little progress in catting it, the tree shook at every stroke, until Sandy, becoming rather uncomfortable, consented to come down. He had no sooner reached the ground than he was collared and marched off to the school in triumph, and was duly whipped by extreme process. Our parents rarely interfered to protect us from the tag, when it was administered in moderation ; though occasionally some noise was made when a boy was sent home utterly incapacitated from occupying a sitting positing. The miller’s wife, a strong-minded dame of the “rampaging” order, so far from being maternally indignant when her son, Johnny, was sent home in a state of pulp, would occasionally call in to enjoin tho dominie not to spare him. This lady was a chief actor in one of most memorable “ scenes.” Her son Johnny had “ fugied” for several days running, and had been found out and duly whipped by the maternal order. Some time after this the good lady found Johnny hiding in the mill, about the middle of the day, when he ought to have been at school. I remember well what came of that discovery. Late one afternoon we were startled from our studies by a noise of wheels, the clattering of soma iron instrument, and and the accents of a shrill, angry voice. The master immediately ran out to sec what was the matter, and wc, the pupils, took the opportunity to rush to the windows. It was the miller’s wife who had arrived with her sou Johnny in a cart, keeping guard over him with the kitchen tongs. The next minute Johnny was driven into the schoolroom by his infuriate parent, who banged him with the tongs as he ran. I shall never forget the scene that ensued. “ Now have your wull o’ him,” said the Spartan parent to the dominie. The dominie, thus licensed, got out the tag ; but Johnny no sooner caught sight of that instrument than he was nerved to the most desperate resistance. The moment the dominie advanced to seize him Johnny scrambled over a desk and dodged him : and when tho dominie ran round after him scrambled back again. The miller’s wife now came to the dominie’s assistance and for nearly quarter of an hour both together hunted Johnny over the desks and forms, hitting out at him wih the tag and the tongs, while the books, and slates aip milk-cans were scattered all over the floor like btoken armour on a battle-field. It was not until Johnny was fairly out of breath that he gave in ; and then lie laid down on his back on the floor, and turning himself rapidly round as on a pivot, menaced first the dominie and then his mother with his iron-shod feet. Johnny managed to resist the extreme penalty designee’ for him, but what with the bumps he received in riding over the decks and the random blows from the tongs and the tag, he had punishment enough and to spare. Of course, as we all saw and felt that this constant flagellation was both cruel and unjust, we were never any better for it, and bore it or resisted it manfully, as martyrs bear and resist persecution. But notwithstanding the loose and desultory, not to say brutal, system pursued at our school, the pupils of all degrees managed, in some way or other, to acquire a very respectable quantum of knowledge, or, if not knowledge itself, the groundwork of knowledge.. The boys who learnt Greek and Latin went to college and took their degrees ; the farmers’ sons went home to give a higher intellectual life to tho society in which their families moved ; and the humbler class of scholars carried away with them to the plough’s tail, the carpenter’s bench, and the smithy, just enough of the rudiments of learning to enable them to cultivate themselves by after study. This fact may seem a contradiction to the picture I have given of my Scotch school. In Scotland however, bad teaching and a high state of mental cultivation among tho masses are quite consistent. The fact is the middle and lower classes in Scotland have a passion for learning. The dearest ambition of the poor cottar is to educate his children, and, if possible, to give one, at least, such an amount of schooling as will fit him for a higher station than that occupied by his parents. A poor hillside crafter will starve himself and his family for ten years of their life to send one of the boys to college and qualify him for the kirk. Such boys, however, learn more poring over their books by the humble fireside at home, or out in the fields in the intervals of their farm work, than at the school. They leam under every disadvantage, because they are spurred on by a love of knowledge and a desire to raise themselves. It is this universal thirst after knowledge and intellectual cultivation that gives Scotland so decided a pre-eminence as regards general education. Persons who can neither read nor write are common enough in England not alone in the country districts but also in the great towns. I doubt if you could find one such in all Scotland. The classes corresponding to the “ hinds” and. “ navvies ” of England, cannot only read and writs, but are capable of enjoying literature in its higher developments. Our farming men at home used to spend their evenings, after their frugal supper of kail brose, in reading the newspapers and discussing the debates in Parliament. Our herd-boy taught himself the elements of astronomy out in the fields, while tending the cattle. He was the first to tell me tho names of the planets and point them out to me. I taught hi*u in return, a little Latin ; and I remember, during mj last year at colleee. meeting this bnrd-ivw —->

THE CHRISTMAS NIGHT-MARCH OF THE VOLUNTEERS. BY MARK LEMO N. Step together! all together! close, close together! Remember this is holy earth On which our measured,footsteps tread— The living land which gave us birth! i The dust of our immortal dead! Perchance the spirits of our sires Look down from yon bright stars above — And from those orbs of quenchless tires Light in our hearts a patriot’s love. The wind shall bear across the sea The burden of our earnest song— Who, hearing, doubts we will be free? Who, knowing this, dare do us wrong? They taunt us with our love of gold, Our hate of blood, our love of peace; Wc would not sell what they have sold For even life itself’s increase. Step together! all together! each man’s true beside us; Close together! fall together! Death can but divide us. CHORUS. Step together, all together, each man’s true beside us, Close together, fall together. Death can but divide us. Step together! all together! close, close together! Free mothers have not sung us lays, Or read our hist’ry’s page in vain; The noble deeds of olden days When needed wc will do again. Stop together! all together! each man’s true beside us; Close together! fall together! Death can but divide us! CHORUS. Step together, all together, each man’s true beside us, Close together, fall together, Death can but divide us. A HYMN FOR CHRISTMAS MORNING. It is the Christmas time, And up and down ’twixt heaven and earth, In glorious grief and solemn mirth, The shining angels climb. Thus into every thing That lies and moves, for heaven, on earth, And has its dole of grief or mirth, The Shining Angels sing. Babes, new-born, undefiled, Sleep safely through this Christmas tide. In lowly house or palace wide, For Jesus was a child. O young man bold and free In peopled town or desert dim When ye arc tempted like to Him, “ The man Christ Jesus” sec. Poor mothers with your hoard Of endless love and countless pain, Remember all her grief, her gain— The mother of the Lord, Mourners, half blind with woe, Look up: One standeth in this place And by the pity of his face The Man of Sorrows know. Travellers in far countric O think of him who came, forgot, To his own—and they received him not— Jesus of Galilee. 0 all ye who have trod The winepress of affliction, lay Your hearts before His heart this day: Behold the Christ of God! CHARADE FOR CHRISTMAS. The taper was burning a lurid blue, The logs on the hearth had ceased to flame; And Fancy quick on the dream-wings flew To the old, old scenes, and their tales of shame! The tapestry figures loom’d grandly there, The lattice creak’d in the winter blast; Oh, how I sighed for the morning fair! Oh, how I prayed that the night was past! I long’d, yet 1 fear’d, to know the worst, And with trembling awe looked round—my First. I had heard the talc by the Christmas fire In the brave sweet days when I was young; I knew how the fiend had tempted the squire; 1 knew the pool where the corse was flung! So young and so pure! Ah, the raven curls! Ah, the snowy brow! Ah, the deep dark eyes! Oh me, how ray brain with the fancy swirls; How my heartbeats quick with a dread surprise! And I shrink as if a ghost-hand beckon’d. She comes, she comes! Can it be my Second? Hark! A tap at the door on the silence falls; And the casement rattles; the cold winds shriek. Whose voice is it now on Sir Walter calls? Does the murder’d one her murderer seek? “To the moated grange,” I cry r , “ Begone! Nor make me still your pitiless mock!” But the voice is pitched in a louder tone—- “ Hot water, Sir; and its seven o’clock!” So I woke, I know, with a cheerful soul; And a fitting backsheesh rewarded my Whole. Answer—" Chambermaid.”