With the progress of civilisation school life in Scotland has taken on a high degree of refinement, and rumour has it—but what will people not say?—that a new boy will come in a cab to the Seminary and will receive a respectful welcome from the generation following Peter, and that the whole school will devote itself to his comfort for days—showing him where to hang his cap, initiating him into games, assisting him with his lessons, and treating his feelings with delicate respect. It has been my own proud satisfaction, as a relic of a former barbarian age, to read the rules, which, I believe, are now printed in black letters with red capitals and hung in the rooms of Muirtown Seminary. My feelings will not allow me to give them all, but the following have moved me almost to tears:—
Rule 1.—That every boy attending this school is expected to behave himself in speech and deed as a gentleman.
Rule 2.—That anyone writing upon a wall, or in any way marking the school furniture, will be considered to have committed an offence, and will be punished.
Rule 3.—That every boy is exhorted to treat every other with courtesy, and anyone guilty of rudeness to a fellow-scholar is to be reported to the headmaster.
Rule 4.—That it is expected of every boy to cultivate neatness of appearance, and especially to see that his clothes, collars, cuffs, and other articles of clothing be not soiled.
These admirable rules suggest a new atmosphere and one very different from that in which we passed our stormy youth, for no sentiment of this kind softened life in earlier days or affected our Spartan simplicity. The very sight of a newcomer in a speckless suit, with an irreproachable tie and both tails on his glengarry bonnet, excited a profound emotion in the school and carried it beyond self-control. What could be expected of a fellow so bedecked and preserved as if he had just stepped out of a bandbox or a tailor's shop? Left alone in his pride and perfection—the very beginning of a Pharisee—he would only go from bad to worse and come at last to a sad end. We hardly claimed to be philanthropists, but we did feel it was our duty to rescue this lad. It might be, of course, that we could not finally save him, but he ought at least to have a chance, and Speug had a quite peculiar satisfaction in at once removing the two offensive tails by one vigorous pull, while the rumpling of a collar was a work of missionary zeal. No system of philanthropy is successful with all cases, and we had our failures, which we think about unto this day, and which have only justified our sad predictions. Boys like the two Dowbiggins never improved, and were at last given up in despair even by Speug, their tails being renewed day by day and their faces remaining in all circumstances quite unmoved; but within a month the average boy had laid aside the last remnant of conventionality, and was only outdone by Peter himself in studied negligence of attire.
Peter's own course of discipline was sharp, but it did not last long, for certain practical reasons.
"What business have you here, ye son of a horse-couper?" was the encouraging salutation offered by a solicitor's son to the stumpy little figure bereft of its father and left to fight its battles alone.
"Mair business than you, spindleshanks, ye son o' a thievin' lawyer," and although Peter was four years younger and small for his age, he showed that he had not learned boxing from his father's grooms without profit, and his opponent attended no more classes that day. This encounter excited the deepest interest and revived the whole life of the school. One lad after another experimented on Peter and made as much of it as drawing a badger. He was often hurt, but he never uttered any cry. He gave rather more than he got, and lads going home in the afternoon could see him giving an account of the studies of the day to an admiring audience in the stable-yard. By-and-by he was left severely alone, and for the impudence of him, and his courage, and his endurance, and his general cockiness, and his extraordinary ingenuity in mischief, he was called "Speug," which is Scotch for a sparrow, and figuratively expressed the admiration of the school.
It would be brazen falsehood to say that Peter was a scholar, or, indeed, gave any voluntary attention to the course of learning laid down by the authorities of Muirtown Seminary. He sat unashamed at the foot of every class, maintaining a certain impenetrable front when a question came his length, and with the instinct of a chieftain never risking his position in the school by exposing himself to contempt. When Thomas John Dowbiggin was distinguishing himself after an unholy fashion by translating Cæsar into English like unto Macaulay's History, Speug used to watch him with keen interest, and employ his leisure time in arranging some little surprise to enliven the even tenor of Thomas John's life. So curious a being, however, is a boy, and so inconsistent, that as often as Duncan Robertson answered more promptly than Thomas John, and obtained the first place, Speug's face lit up with unaffected delight, and he was even known to smack his lips audibly. When the rector's back was turned he would convey his satisfaction over Thomas John's discomfiture with such delightful pantomime that the united class did him homage, and even Thomas John was shaken out of his equanimity; but then Duncan Robertson's father was colonel of a Highland regiment, and Duncan himself was a royal fighter, and had not in his Highland body the faintest trace of a prig, while Thomas John's face was a standing reproof of everything that was said and done outside of lesson time in Muirtown School.