looked in, and asked them if they would make me a cup of tea. This they readily agreed to do, and going to their store, I soon had everything I could wish. While refreshing myself, my eye wandered over the room, which served alike for parlour, bedroom, and kitchen, the groceries being kept in the lean-to. Box-beds had been discarded for two well-appointed four-posters, very different from the gaunt skeletons, with drabby shawls doing duty for curtains, one sees so often in southern cottages. But what struck me most of all were the books. Not only was there a good bookcase, with Goldsmith's "Animated Nature," and the "History of England," in three volumes, well bound, but on a little table by my side I observed Good Words, the Sunday Magazine, St Paul's Magazine, "The Holy Grail," and "The Old Curiosity Shop." I was not surprised to learn that these people were good Presbyterians, and staunch believers in the value of education. The father was taking his rest after his midday meal, reading the newspaper, and I fell into conversation with him and his wife. They told me that their children, a boy and a girl, had to walk every day six or seven miles to school at Whittingham, but they did not speak of it as a hardship, or as an excuse for neglecting to send their children. As to the young people themselves, they evidently loved learning all the more since it had cost them such an effort to obain it.
It was in the churchyard of the parish where they went to school that I met with the following inscription:—
"Sacred to the Memory
of
JAMES MITCHELL, Teacher, Branton,
Son of William and Mary Mitchell,
Who died 15th of August 1853, aged 26 years.
Me was a young man of cultivated and refined mind, well aware of the importance of his profession. He discharged his duties efficiently, gained the affections of his pupils, and the respect of all who knew him. 'Having kept the faith,' he died in the full hope of attaining a 'crown of glory.'"
All honour to the land that honours the schoolmaster: What
