"Yes, Mrs. Dowbiggin, I have always had a love for boys—for I was the youngest of our family, and the rest were girls—seven dear girls, gentle and sweet. They taught me sympathy. And don't you think that boys, as well as older people, are ruled by kindness and not by force? When I remember how I was treated, I feel this is how other boys would wish to be treated. Muffins? Buttered, if you please. I dote on muffins! So I am a schoolmaster."
"You are needed at the Seminary, Mr. Byles, I can tell you, for the place is just a den of savages! Will you believe me, that a boy rolled James on the ground till he was like a clay cat yesterday—and James is so particular about being neat!—and when I complained to Mr. MacKinnon, he laughed in my face and told me that it would do the laddie good? There's a master for you! Thomas John tells me that he is called 'Bulldog,' and although I don't approve of disrespect, I must say it is an excellent name for Mr. MacKinnon. And I've often said to the Doctor, 'If the masters are like that, what can you expect of the boys?'"
"Let us hope, Mrs. Dowbiggin, that there will soon be some improvement; and it will not be my fault if there isn't. What I want to be is not a master, but the boys' friend, to whom the boys will feel as to a mother, to whom they will confide their difficulties and trials," and Mr. Byles' face had a soft, tender, far-away look.
It was only for one winter that he carried on his mission, but it remains a green and delectable memory with old boys of the Seminary. How he would not use the cane, because it brutalised boys, as he explained, but kept Peter McGuffie in for an hour, during which time he remonstrated with Peter for his rude treatment of James Dowbiggin, whom he had capsized over a form, and how Peter's delighted compatriots climbed up one by one to the window and viewed him under Mr. Byles' ministrations with keen delight, while Speug imitated to them by signs that they would have to pay handsomely for their treat. How he would come on Jock Howieson going home in a heavy rain, and ostentatiously refusing even to button his coat, and would insist on affording him the shelter of an umbrella, to Jock's intense humiliation, who knew that Peter was following with derisive criticism. How, by way of conciliation, Mr. Byles would carry sweets in his coat-tail pocket and offer them at unsuitable times to the leading anarchists, who regarded this imbecility as the last insult. It is now agreed that Mr. Byles' sudden resignation was largely due to an engineering feat of Peter's, who had many outrages to avenge, and succeeded in attaching no less than three squibs to the good man's desk; but it is likely that an exhortation from Bulldog, overheard by the delighted school, had its due effect.
"Humanity or no humanity, my man, it's no peppermint drops nor pats on the head that'll rule Muirtown birkies; their fathers were brought up on the stick, and the stick'll make the sons men. If ye'll take my advice, Mr. Byles, adverteese for a situation in a lassies' school. Ye're ower dainty for Muirtown Seminary."
This was not a charge which his worst enemy could bring against Mr. Dugald MacKinnon, and because he was the very opposite—a most unflinching, resolute, iron man—he engraved himself on the hearts of three generations of Muirtown men. They were a dour, hard-headed, enterprising lot—a blend from the upland braes of Drumtochty and the stiff carse of Gowrie and the Celts of Lock Tay, with some good south country stuff—and there are not many big cities on either side of the Atlantic where two or three Muirtown men cannot this day be found. They always carry in their hearts the "Fair City"—which lieth in a basin among the hills, beside the clean, swift-running river, like a Scots Florence; and they grow almost eloquent when they start upon their home, but the terminus of recollection is ever the same. When they have dallied with the swimming in the Tay, and the climbing of the hill which looks down on the fair plain as far as Dundee, and the golf on the meadows, and the mighty snow fights in days where there were men (that is, boys) in the land, and memory is fairly awake, some one suddenly says, "Bulldog." "Ah!" cries another, with long-drawn pleasure, as one tasting a delicate liquor; and "Bulldog," repeats the third, as if a world of joy lay in the word. They rest for a minute, bracing themselves, and then conversation really begins, and being excited, they drop into the Scots tongue.
"Man," hurries in the first, "a' see him stannin' at his desk in the mornin' watchin' the laddies comin' in ower the top o' his spectacles, an' juist considerin' wha wud be the better o' a bit thrashin' that day."
"Sax feet high gin he wes an inch," bursts in the second, "an' as straight as a rush, though a'm thinkin' he wes seventy, or maybe eighty, some threipit (insisted) he was near ninety; an' the een o' him—div ye mind, lads, hoo they gied back an' forward in his head—oscillatin' like? Sall, they were fearsome."
"An' the rush to get in afore the last stroke o' nine"—the third man cannot be restrained—"an' the crack o' his cane on the desk an' 'Silence'; man, ye micht hae heard a moose cross the floor at the prayer."
"Div ye think he keekit oot atween his eyelids, Jock?"