“Come, come, Erchie,” I protested; “you are in quite an inconsistent humour to-day; surely Alick’s thrashings are all in the scheme of nature. If he is not punished now for inability to do that interesting proposition in compound proportion, he will be swindled out of part of his just payment when paid for bricklaying by the piece when he has taken to the trade, and the thing—once more as the Highlandman said—is as broad as it’s wide.”
“Nane o’ my guid-dochter’s sons is gaun to tak’ to treds,” said Erchie, coldly; “they’re a’ gaun to be bankers and electreecians and clerks and genteel things o’ that sort. If I’m no’ consistent aboot, this, it’s because o’ whit I tellt ye, that I’ve read ower mony o’ thae letters and interviews in the papers, and canna mak’ up my mind. I ken fine a’ the beltin’s I got in the school were for my guid, but—but—but it’s different wi’ wee Alick.”
“But we have all our wee Alicks, Erchie.”
“Then we’re a’ weel aff,” said Erchie, glowing, “for yon’s the comicalest wee trate! The Rale Oreeginal.”
“But the teachers don’t understand him?”
“That’s the hale p’int,” said Erchie, agreeably; “the teachers never dae. They’re no’ pyed for understandin’ a’ the wee Alicks: a’ that can be expected for the wages the schoolmaisters get in Gleska is that they’ll haul the wee cratur by the scruff o’ the neck through a’ the standards.. The schoolmaister and the mither ought to be mair prized and bigger pyed than ony ither class in the country, but they’re no’, and that’s the reason their jobs are often sae badly filled up.
“If education was a’ that folk think it is, there wad lang syne hae been nae need for cane nor strap. For mair nor a generation noo, every bairn has had to go to the school—a’ the parents o’ a’ the weans in school the noo have had an education themsel’s, so that baith at hame and in the school the young generation of the present day have sae mony advantages ower whit you and I had, they ought to be regular gems o’ guid behaviour and intelligence.
“But I canna see that they’re ony better than their grandfaithers were at the same age. Except my good-dochter’s boy Alick, I think they’re a’ worse.
“A’ the difference seems to be that they’re auld sooner than we were, smoke sooner, and swear sooner, and in a hunner wyes need mair leatherin’ than we did. Education o’ the heid’s no’ education o’ the hert, and the only thing that comes frae crammin’ a callant o’ naiturally bad disposeetion with book-learnin’ is that he’s the better trained for swindlin’ his fellow-men when he’s auld enough to try his hand at it. I wad be awfu’ prood o’ every new school that’s in Gleska if I didna ken that I had to pye a polis tax for’t by-and-bye as weel as school tax.”
“How glad we ought to be, Erchie, that we were born in a more virtuous age,” I said, and Erchie screwed up his face.