CHAMBERS'S JOURNAL
OF
POPULAR
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.

ROB GRAHAM

A TWEEDSIDE REMINISCENCE, BY W. CHAMBERS, LL.D.

I propose giving one of my early recollections, which lately turned up in the memory of the past. It refers to an incident which occurred only a few years after the beginning of the present century, when I was a boy at the burgh school of Peebles, a small town on the Tweed. The school in its way had a somewhat superior reputation, and drew to it pupils from a distance of several miles around. Trudging in all weathers, the children of farmers and ploughmen came to be educated along with boys and girls belonging to the town. Whatever they were, all were treated alike, and the intermingling of classes was never found to be in any respect disadvantageous; on the contrary, there sprung up agreeable acquaintanceships between the town and country boys that were mutually useful and agreeable.

Among the crowd of country lads who thronged in daily, there was one I have some cause to remember. His name was Rob Graham. I will try to give a picture of Rob. Imagine a sturdy boy of twelve years of age, well knit together, barelegged and barefooted in summer, with coarse red hair surmounting a brow so large that one would say there were good brains under it. Rob's face was placid like that of an old man, and I think was slightly marked with small-pox, as was then not at all unusual. His dress, of a simple kind, consisted of a pair of dingy corduroy trousers and waistcoat, and a short coat of that coarse fabric known as Galashiels blue, with two broad metal buttons staring out behind; which buttons, from their well-worn appearance, had probably embellished a succession of coats of Rob's father and grandfather; for in those days buttons were buttons, and went through a good deal of service before being dismissed. As the fastenings of the dress could with a rive of the hand be rapidly torn asunder, the wearer could at any moment throw off clothes and shirt and plunge into the river stark naked. As Rob's leather cap, stuck on the top of his shock of red hair, was worth very little, we should deal liberally in estimating his whole equipment at the value of twenty shillings.

What signifies, however, the outside of boys? Who cares a farthing how they are dressed? The bodily physique and interior of the skull are the things really worth caring for. Rob's big square face and prominent brow shewed there was something in him. Poorly dressed as he appeared at school, he took the shine out of boys decked out with frills, shoes, and stockings. There was not a boy who shewed more dexterity at 'duck,' a game of pitching a heavy stone at a mark, or who ran with greater vigour at 'shinty,' on the school green. Rob was also a good fighter, and few boys, as the saying is, 'dared to take him up.' Yet Rob was a good-humoured and merry fellow, who did not want to quarrel with anybody. He even condescended to make himself agreeable to the girls in the school, by hopping on one leg in their game which they called 'the beds,' and in dexterously throwing up small shells to be caught on the back of the hand, and locally known as the 'chucks.' Then, he was so obliging. If he saw a poor woman carrying with difficulty a backful of clothes to be bleached on the banks of the mill-stream, he would offer to help her, and did so without any hope of reward. No wonder that this poor boy made friends, and was respected for his good conduct and gallantry. By birth a peasant. By nature a hero!

There in memory does Rob Graham stand before me. Miserably attired and educated, knowing nothing of the world outside the tranquil valley in which he was born, Rob had the dash and courage of a Crusader. Nor was he indebted to good feeding for his diligence and activity. In the morning before quitting home, his mother doubtless supplied him with a breakfast of oatmeal porridge and milk. That, in a great measure kept him going for the day. To stay his hunger, however, a piece of pease-bannock about the size of your hand, and nearly an inch thick, which his mother had baked on the girdle, was stuffed into his right-hand pocket—the left one being occupied with his 'peerie' and 'bools'[1]—and so he was provided with dinner; for beyond the lump of bannock and a drink of water, which he scooped with his hand from the Tweed, he tasted nothing till he was comforted with a repetition of porridge and milk for supper. So much for Rob's dress and mode of living.

By some unaccountable feeling, I felt interested in Rob. I saw him daily seated in the left-hand corner of the school as you go in, poring over his lesson, or playing some prank when the master's back was turned. On one occasion, I pointed out to him how to work out a question in arithmetic on his slate; and at another time afforded some little advice as to his style of penmanship in writing 'a piece' for the public Examination by ministers, magistrates, and other great people. As for his reading I did not interfere, for it would have been useless. Like other pupils, he read aloud with a coarse facility, lessons from Barrie's Collection, and repeated psalms by heart, with little regard to points or modulation, and so loudly, that if the windows were open, you might have heard him a hundred yards off—no one finding fault, not